Shane Su­perville

Se­nior Re­porter

shane.su­perville@guardian.co.tt

She is still shak­en and afraid af­ter the mur­der of her hus­band, but Pauleen Gopie says she loves the 34-year-old rel­a­tive who has been ar­rest­ed in con­nec­tion with the killing.

Gopie’s hus­band, De­o­dath Gopie, 58, was chopped to death at his Grant Trace Ex­ten­sion, Beau­car­ro, Freeport, home ear­ly on Sun­day morn­ing. Po­lice were called to the home by his wife who locked the doors to her room.

The sus­pect re­mained in po­lice cus­tody up to Mon­day af­ter­noon.

Gopie, who spoke with Guardian Me­dia at the Foren­sic Sci­ence Cen­tre, St James, yes­ter­day, said she made sev­er­al calls to the po­lice and the Emer­gency Health Ser­vices (EHS) to have her men­tal­ly un­sta­ble rel­a­tive re­moved from the house bcause of her con­cerns about his vi­o­lent ten­den­cies.

She said she is deeply hurt by her hus­band’s mur­der and felt it could have been avoid­ed if her calls were heed­ed.

Gopie said she still loves her rel­a­tive but can­not con­tin­ue to live with him if he was re­leased by po­lice as he is a threat to her safe­ty.

“Right now the po­lice have him and from then they may car­ry him to St Anns and from there I don’t know what would take place and what not. I re­al­ly don’t know the pro­ce­dure so I have no in­ten­tion to be nowhere around him again,” she said.

Gopie said her hus­band did not de­serve to die in such a vi­o­lent man­ner but ad­mit­ted that he was abu­sive to her and oth­er rel­a­tives dur­ing their 37 years of mar­riage.

“It’s 37 years now I mar­ried to him and it’s up to this God-blessed day he nev­er changed. He keep pro­vok­ing the en­tire fam­i­ly. He is nice to the out­side world, not to his fam­i­ly,” she said.

Gopie ap­pealed to the au­thor­i­ties to treat with re­ports of po­ten­tial­ly vi­o­lent rel­a­tives with greater ur­gency and said she hoped fu­ture in­ci­dents could be avoid­ed with po­lice in­ter­ven­tion.

A polie source said there were no re­cent re­ports against the sus­pect by his fam­i­ly or any­one in the area but the fam­i­ly is known to the dis­trict po­lice.

The of­fi­cer said when a re­port is made about a men­tal­ly un­sta­ble per­son, men­tal health pro­fes­sion­als are usu­al­ly en­gaged with po­lice sup­port. The of­fi­cer was un­able to con­firm if the per­son mak­ing the re­port told po­lice the sus­pect was men­tal­ly chal­lenged.

Po­lice from the Homi­cide Bu­reau of In­ves­ti­ga­tions Re­gion III were due to in­ter­view oth­er rel­a­tives in re­la­tion to Gopie’s mur­der late yes­ter­day.