– man in custody
A 28-year-old waitress of Number 11 Village, West Coast Berbice died yesterday morning after her lover poured a poisonous substance down her throat, accusing her of being unfaithful.
The woman, Iola Ashantie Reynolds who was employed at a Chinese Restaurant at Bush Lot was rushed to the Fort Wellington Hospital around 6.30 am but succumbed around 10 am.
The man, with whom she had a visiting relationship that started last year, has since turned himself into the police and is in custody at the Fort Wellington Police Station as investigations continue.
Reynolds was mother to three children, Donna Smith, 11; Keon Smith, 7 and five-year-old Candacy Britton.
After committing the act, the man calmly walked out of the woman’s apartment “when the place get bright,” ordering Reynolds not to “tell your mother wat ah do to you.”
Her mother, Isha Ally, 60, who resides in the upper flat of the house with the woman’s children, told Stabroek News that the man had been waiting at the roadside on Sunday until her daughter returned from work around 10 pm.
Once she got home, Ally said, he kept arguing with her and accusing her of “having another man.” The two went into the apartment together and the fighting continued throughout the night.
Around 4 am, Ally said, unable to rest because the man kept fighting with her daughter, she went outside and sat on her veranda. Shortly afterwards, she said, she saw the man bring her daughter, who had a towel wrapped around her, into the yard.
She also heard him shouting, “What I don’t like you mustn’t do… If I can’t get you, no man can’t get you!” The man then took Reynolds back into the apartment.
Ally said that as he was leaving some time later, she heard him telling her daughter not to tell her mother what had he had done.
She said her daughter waited until she was sure the man was gone then shouted, “Ow mommy, meh stomach blazing.” She then related that the man had forced poison down her throat.
The woman said she immediately ran to get a neighbour to assist her in taking her daughter to the hospital. The neighbour placed Reynolds on his bicycle and took her out the long street. At the public road they flagged down a taxi and rushed her to the hospital.
When this newspaper visited the scene a greenish substance suspected to be poison was on the bed and a bowl of food was in a corner on the floor.
Ally said that the man who visited her daughter was always in the habit of beating her. She said many times she tried to intervene but the man would tell her “if you only say anything ah gon put it pun you too”.
According to her the man threatened her daughter on several occasions but she had never reported the threats to the police.
Ally, who struggles to scrape by on what she earns as a domestic worker, now has to care for her grandchildren.