Fatal fight with girlfriend

RYAN HAMILTON-DAVIS and NALINEE SEELAL

ATIBA HAMLET, an unemployed 28-year-old Belmont man was fatally stabbed in the neck during a fight with his 27-year-old girlfriend at his Belle Eau Road home early yesterday.

While the woman who has surrendered to police is claiming she was a victim of domestic abuse and acted in self-defence, Hamlet’s relatives insist it is the other way around and he was the one who endured abuse at the hands of the woman.

“She is accustomed to abusing him and he would not usually fight back,” said Hamlet’s sister, who did not wish to be named. “She threw hot water on him, she chopped him, she did him all kinds of things, but he had children with her and he kept going back.”

Relatives said Hamlet and the woman were together for four years and whenever they saw him, he would be nursing bruises on his face. Relatives claimed he was even hospitalised twice after being chopped by the woman and another time, when he was was scalded with hot water thrown by her.

The woman, a mother of five, had two children with Hamlet, the youngest being only 18 months old. Relatives told Newsday that he was in love with her, and did not want any harm to come to her so he endured those four years of abuse instead of bringing the matter to the police.

At 4.15 am yesterday Hamlet was at his home with the woman when a heated argument broke out and escalated to a fight. The woman took an unknown sharp object and stabbed him once in the neck. As he fell to the ground, the woman ran away to get help. When police arrived, Hamlet was already dead. At the Belmont police station, the woman told police she was a victim of domestic violence and acted in self-defence.

Rhondall Feeles, head of the Single Fathers Association, called on the investigators to conduct a proper probe into the matter, noting that in the majority of domestic cases where a man is killed by a woman, it is assumed that the woman acted out of self-defence, but when a woman is killed by a man, the man is immediately considered the aggressor.