(Jamaica Observer) Sometime ago, Orville Riley allegedly threatened to kill his 40-year-old girlfriend Anika Walker if she ever ended their relationship.
Yesterday, he is suspected to have followed through on his threat, as Walker’s body was found with multiple stab wounds in the couple’s house on Portland Road in Rollington Town, St Andrew.
Residents told the Jamaica Observer that Riley’s body was found hanging in the washroom. However, a release from the Jamaica Constabulary Force’s Corporate Communications Unit said the Elletson Road police were summoned to the community at approximately 6:15 am by residents who had stumbled upon Riley’s body hanging by a cable cord from a tree.
“Him say if him and her left him a go kill her and kill himself. Him nuh wah come out,” residents were overheard saying to each other.
“Him say him nah lose,” another resident said.
An irate cousin, who was seen sitting on the road, said he saw Riley yesterday afternoon.
He said at the time, Riley was drinking, smoking, and playing a game of dominoes.
“All mi come up deh from wah day and a say, ‘Just tell mi wah a gwaan inna di house,’ nobody nah talk. Everybody a hide,” he continued.
“Dem tell all di bwoy fi lef, and nobody nuh say nothing to me. The bwoy kill me best cousin. Only life Mommy give me and send mi guh good school… lawd God, a mi hand and foot that. The waste bwoy come from way a Old Harbour come kill mi best, best cousin. When mi cousin sick, mi bathe every morning and come feed her, and now dis,” he cried.
The Observer was also told by a family friend that Walker’s nude body was found with a pillow covering her face and a knife in the side of her neck.
Another of Walker’s relatives, who was seen in her nightgown with tears streaming down her face, told the Observer that she had been awakened by her neighbour in Greenwich Town, who got wind of her cousin’s death.
However, she said she was of the view that Walker had died in her sleep, until she got to Rollington Town yesterday morning.
The woman, while noting that Walker, otherwise called TT, did not discuss her relationship with Riley with her family, said she had never met him.
Scores of residents, relatives and friends, including policemen from downtown Kingston where Walker operated her business as a higgler, and family members from as far as St Ann, converged at the crime scene while police officers collected evidence.
“She was an angel in a nutshell, you understand,” her neighbour Mark told the Observer.
Pointing out that he last saw Walker on Wednesday night, he said it was unlike her to wake up and not come outside.
“Normally, she would come out and she would come over here, and so forth, and we don’t see her,” Mark said, adding that when she didn’t visit they went over to her house.
By this time, Walker’s parents had arrived at the scene.
“God, you see everything, God,” Walker’s father Alvin cried.
They, too, had to be consoled minutes before undertakers took both bodies away.
