Police have detained the man who had stalked Vanessa Francis and repeatedly stabbed her last month in an attempt to kill her.
Nigel Douglas, called “Ital,” of Haslington, East Coast Demerara, was taken into custody yesterday after being picked up in the city. He had been on the run since the February 16 incident at Nabaclis and had threatened Francis even while the police were looking for him.
Stabroek News was told that someone spotted Douglas hanging out at a city bus park and telephoned the police, who promptly turned up and arrested him. He is currently in custody at the Brickdam Police Station.
Francis expressed relief when contacted yesterday, but was concerned as to whether the authorities will release the man on station bail. She was forced to change her landline number due to threatening phone calls from him and just recently persons spotted him in the Nabaclis area, where she lives.
Francis and her former partner are presently before the court in two separate matters; an assault charge and a theft charge. The man had assaulted Francis last year September and also took away her gold jewellery.
On February 16, Francis had just entered a taxi when the man confronted her.
He tried to drag her from the front seat of the car while stabbing her continuously. The man ran and left Francis lying in the taxi after her screaming stopped. She sustained injuries to her upper body, legs and arms.
She said that he repeatedly called her landline phone often and would make threats. On one occasion, he called and identified himself “as the man who is going to kill Vanessa Francis.”
Francis said the relationship ended last September, when the man beat her severely and took away her gold jewellery. She decided to call it quits and has been living in fear ever since because he kept calling her at home and showing up at night.
In October last year, he broke into the home and was lying in wait for her, but another person who was in the house at the time scared him off. Francis said that he visited her home in December with a cutlass in hand and said he was going to kill her. She reported the matter and the police went to his home and detained him. But he was subsequently released.
