RAD­HI­CA DE SIL­VA

Se­nior Mul­ti­me­dia Re­porter

rad­hi­ca.sookraj@guardian.co.tt

A Vista­bel­la woman has told po­lice she en­dured more than six hours of al­leged abuse and ter­ror be­fore she shot and killed a close male rel­a­tive with his own firearm in­side their home on Wednes­day morn­ing.

Dead is busi­ness­man Steve Ghany, 37, of Alexan­der Street, Vista­bel­la.

Ac­cord­ing to po­lice re­ports, of­fi­cers on mo­bile pa­trol in the South­ern Di­vi­sion re­spond­ed to a re­port of a shoot­ing in progress re­layed by the E999 Com­mand Cen­tre short­ly af­ter 9 am. When they ar­rived at the two-storey house min­utes lat­er, they were met by the 45-year-old woman, who said she had act­ed in self-de­fence af­ter shoot­ing Ghany.

In­ves­ti­ga­tors were told the or­deal be­gan around 2.30 am when Ghany re­turned home and an ar­gu­ment over al­leged in­fi­deli­ty erupt­ed. The dis­pute es­ca­lat­ed in­to what the woman de­scribed as a pro­longed and vi­o­lent as­sault that con­tin­ued for sev­er­al hours in­to the morn­ing.

Po­lice were told that by around 8.30 am, the con­fronta­tion had moved to the cou­ple’s bed­room, where it turned dead­ly. The woman al­leged that Ghany drew one of his li­censed firearms and opened fire in her di­rec­tion but missed. Fear­ing for her life, she said she re­trieved an­oth­er of his legal­ly owned weapons and fired mul­ti­ple shots, strik­ing him sev­er­al times.

When of­fi­cers en­tered the up­stairs bed­room, they found Ghany slumped on the floor in a pool of blood, clad on­ly in box­er shorts, with mul­ti­ple gun­shot wounds to the body. He was pro­nounced dead at the scene by a dis­trict med­ical of­fi­cer.

Crime scene in­ves­ti­ga­tors re­cov­ered two li­censed pis­tols—a Glock 19 and a Sig Sauer—along with 11 spent 9mm shells, pro­jec­tiles, and oth­er bal­lis­tic ev­i­dence. The de­ceased held a valid Firearm User’s Li­cence for the weapons.

The woman’s hands were swabbed for gun­shot residue, and her cloth­ing was seized as part of the in­ves­ti­ga­tion. She was lat­er ar­rest­ed and tak­en for med­ical ex­am­i­na­tions.

In a re­port to po­lice, she al­so claimed that dur­ing the or­deal, Ghany threat­ened to kill her and her two daugh­ters, aged four and nine, who were in the home at the time.

A close fam­i­ly friend said the woman had been liv­ing in fear for years, al­leg­ing a pat­tern of abuse that caused her to with­draw from loved ones.

“She start­ed pulling away from every­body,” the friend said. “We knew some­thing was wrong, but she wasn’t say­ing much.”

The friend added that in re­cent months, the woman had be­come in­creas­ing­ly iso­lat­ed, rais­ing con­cerns among rel­a­tives and ac­quain­tances.

An em­ploy­ee at the house re­port­ed hear­ing sev­er­al loud ex­plo­sions con­sis­tent with gun­fire short­ly be­fore po­lice were called.

Fol­low­ing the in­ci­dent, the woman’s two young daugh­ters—who were de­scribed as trau­ma­tised—were tak­en to stay with rel­a­tives.

Po­lice con­firmed that ad­di­tion­al items were seized from the home as in­ves­ti­ga­tions con­tin­ue in­to the cir­cum­stances sur­round­ing the killing, which is be­ing treat­ed as a do­mes­tic-re­lat­ed homi­cide.

In De­cem­ber 2024, Ghany’s step­moth­er was gunned down while dri­ving along La­dy Hailes Av­enue, San Fer­nan­do, in an at­tack that al­so left his step­broth­er Matthew in­jured.

Up to yes­ter­day, the sus­pect re­mained in po­lice cus­tody as homi­cide in­ves­ti­ga­tors con­tin­ued en­quiries.