A Guyanese-born boxer is now in police custody as police investigate the brutal murder of his girlfriend, a mother of two, who was found beaten and stabbed in New York on Monday last.
According to www.dnainfo.com Trevis Hall, a boxer who won the Golden Gloves championship in 2009 and who is originally from Guyana, is now being questioned over the death of 31-year-old Margarita Rivera.
The report said the young mother of two was beaten with a metal pipe in the head and stabbed multiple times in the chest on Monday in broad daylight down the street from her Jamaica, Queens, home.
Hall 28, was found unconscious and intoxicated, but otherwise uninjured in a dumpster 3 miles away from the scene hours after the incident. He has not yet been charged.
The report said that Hall was born in Georgetown, Guyana and won the Golden Gloves championship as a bantamweight in the novice class in 2009. He was also a Golden Gloves semifinalist as a bantamweight in the open class in 2010 and 2011.
Witnesses told the news outlet that Rivera was beaten so badly with a metal pipe that she was unrecognizable and that one of the stab wounds was so large that it looked like she had been shot. They reported seeing a person hit Rivera with a pipe around 2.30 pm, before repeatedly stabbing her in the head and chest and running away. The woman was pronounced dead at Jamaica Hospital and police said both the pipe and the knife were found at the scene.
According to the report, Hall and Rivera had broken up a few weeks ago and Hall was staying with his family in Far Rockaway.
In early June, Hall got into a fight with Rivera’s 19-year-old foster son. According to the criminal complaint, Hall had threatened the man with a knife and then punched him in the face with a 2-pound dumbbell, breaking his cheekbone.
The report indicated that the Queens District Attorney office said Hall, who was charged with felony assault and criminal possession of a weapon, was released without bail. He later pleaded guilty to misdemeanour assault on October 7, 2014, and was given a conditional discharge – meaning that the case would be dismissed if he stayed out of trouble for a certain period of time. The victim in that case was given an order of protection.
It was reported that the couple had no history of domestic violence. But on November 26, Rivera reported that Hall had stolen her cell phone. Hall was not charged in that incident.
Toi Troy, 50, who runs a day care four doors down from where Rivera was beaten, said she came out of her house right after the stabbing. She told the news outlet that the woman was lying on the ground. “She was still breathing but she was out,” she said. “Her face was so bloody I didn’t even recognize her, and she had a stab wound to her heart so big that I thought it was a gunshot wound.”
Neighbours said Rivera, who had lived on the block for about a year, was always seen with her two young children.
And it appears that Hall did not take the advice he gave to others on his Facebook page just recently he wrote: “When anger rises, think of the consequences. While seeking revenge, dig two graves one for yourself. I’ve learn (sic) Holding on to anger is like grasping a hot coal with the intent of throwing it at someone else; I’m the one who gets burned. . . . Getting angry doesn’t solve anything. Using my brain and taking a much smarter approach dealing with all of life challeges will put everything where I need it to be.”
According to the New York Daily News, which runs the Golden Gloves championship, Hall is an immigrant from Guyana who grew up in a house with seven sisters as told to them five years ago in an interview. He had said his protective mother had tried to point him away from boxing because it was too dangerous.
