An ear­ly morn­ing con­fronta­tion in Mal­abar end­ed in tragedy yes­ter­day when a 26-year-old car sales­man was stabbed mul­ti­ple times and died short­ly af­ter reach­ing the Ari­ma Hos­pi­tal.

The vic­tim was iden­ti­fied as De­lano Be­deshi, al­so known as “Lano”, of Ar­joon Av­enue, Mal­abar.

Po­lice were called to the hos­pi­tal short­ly af­ter 1.20 am, af­ter Be­deshi was tak­en there, suf­fer­ing from sev­er­al stab wounds.

He was pro­nounced dead around 1.45 am, de­spite at­tempts by doc­tors to save his life.

Po­lice in­ves­ti­ga­tions so far have found that Be­deshi was in­side his white Nis­san Ti­i­da, speak­ing with an ac­quain­tance out­side a res­i­dence in Mal­abar, when an­oth­er man ap­proached. A ver­bal ex­change en­sued be­tween Be­deshi and the man be­fore the dis­pute es­ca­lat­ed in­to a phys­i­cal con­fronta­tion.

Dur­ing the al­ter­ca­tion, Be­deshi was stabbed sev­er­al times.

Al­though se­ri­ous­ly wound­ed, Be­deshi man­aged to get back in­to his ve­hi­cle and be­gan dri­ving to­wards the Ari­ma Hos­pi­tal.

The ac­quain­tance who had been with him re­port­ed­ly took con­trol of the ve­hi­cle and drove him the rest of the way to the hos­pi­tal.

Po­lice lat­er ar­rest­ed a sus­pect in con­nec­tion with the killing.

The sus­pect was tak­en for med­ical treat­ment be­fore be­ing de­tained at the Ari­ma Po­lice Sta­tion as in­ves­ti­ga­tions con­tin­ued yes­ter­day. —An­drea Perez-Sobers