By Shabna Ullah
An 18-year-old mother of one of Number 40 Village, West Coast Berbice is believed to have been murdered at her home just after 9 am yesterday, but the suspect who is in police custody is claiming that she was electrocuted.
Elsie Shenetta Culley, who was rushed to the Fort Wellington Hospital with burn marks on two fingers of her left hand, was pronounced dead on arrival. The suspect has since told the police that the teen was killed after she came into contact with wires on her brother’s music set.
However, there are indications that she might have been killed in an apparent fit of jealousy as the father of her two-year-old daughter had returned to the area the night before and she had been seen talking to him.
This newspaper learnt that Culley was alone at home doing laundry when the suspect of Lichfield, whom she had reportedly started “talking to a few weeks ago” approached her from the back of the yard. He reportedly sent her in the house for a phone, but for some reason a neighbour who was also in the yard told her not to go. The young woman did not heed the neighbour’s advice and proceeded into the house and the suspect reportedly followed her.
This newspaper was told that shortly after they went into the house, Culley began to scream.
She was then heard shouting, “You see how you come to kill me…” Then there was silence. The young woman’s brother Lincoln Culley who was returning home from Bush Lot told Stabroek News that as he was about to enter the yard, he saw the suspect running out.
He said the suspect told him that his sister had been “shocked” and he ran into the house where he saw her lying motionless on the bed in her bedroom. He said he picked her up and rushed her to the hospital.
Relatives who learnt what had transpired, ran after the suspect, who was heading into the backdam, and apprehended him.
Lincoln Culley, a soldier based at Timehri, who had just arrived home for the weekend said it appeared as though there was a struggle in his bedroom because the bed was rumpled and the curtain torn down. He said that his sister was apparently lifted into her room after the incident.
He said he had attached an extension cord to his music set in his bedroom from another section of the house but he had unplugged it before he left home.
He also said that there was no problem with the connections and found it strange that his sister would get shock “just like that.”
The teen’s mother, Iris Culley who works at the Fort Wellington Hospital, said she left home around 8.55 am to go to church.
Around 10 am, she said, she received the news that her daughter had been taken to the hospital. She said a member of the church accompanied her to the hospital, but when she got there, she learnt that her daughter was already dead.
The distraught mother said she saw Cullley talking to the suspect one afternoon and she had warned her to “keep away from him”. She said her daughter responded that she just knew him to talk to.
The father of Culley’s child, Orlanzo Webster, who is attached to the Tactical Services Unit, told this newspaper that he was at home at Hopetown Village when her mother called and told him to go to the hospital because “something happened to Elsie.”
He said he went there immediately and he saw her mother crying. Culley was lying on a bed. He said he squeezed her hand, but she did not respond and he then realized she was dead.
Culley, the third of five siblings, was undergoing a work-study programme at the Lichfield Health Centre through the Social Impact Amelioration Programme.
Investigations are continuing.
