Young bride murdered, husband’s throat slit

A CRAZED bodybuilder fatally stabbed a Christian woman then turned the knife on himself six days after she left an El Socorro home disgusted at his temper which seemingly had gone out of control. The deceased woman has been identified as Donna Marie Alexis-Yearwood, 30, the manager of the Frederick Street branch of Catwalk. The 35-year-old suspect, was up to late evening warded in stable condition at the Mount Hope Medical Sciences Complex after slitting his windpipe several times leaving the knife stuck in his throat.  The strapping man is under heavy police guard. Alexis-Yearwood died Friday in an Emergency Health Services (EHS) ambulance on her way to the Port-of-Spain General Hospital (PoSGH). Her sister, Kathy, and 55-year-old mother Jean Coryat had managed to overpower the man, taking away a .38 revolver he intended to shoot Alexis-Yearwood with.
  
When this was achieved, the suspect, a welder, promised to leave but made an about turn and broke down the burglarproofing leading into the living room area.  He then used a knife to stab the woman then himself. A six-week-old baby lay on the floor in the living room area where the incident occurred but was saved, thanks to the heroic efforts of his aunt, Kathy, and grandmother. Mother Jean told Sunday Newsday that the man came to her house at Tenth Street, Barataria, four times on Friday, the last time at 4.45 pm. Donna, one of her eight children had taken the day off from work Friday and the suspect seemed to have known this, having gone to her place of work that same day. Jean said the man, who has been described as illiterate, had come around 2 pm saying he wanted Yearwood-Alexis to sign a piece of document he had gotten from a Justice of the Peace in Tunapuna. He left and returned around 4.45 pm not only wanting Alexis-Yearwood to sign the document but to hand him a bucket of water to wash his car. There was no document, but the woman was unaware of this and so decided to sit with the man in a vehicle parked in the yard of her mother’s Barataria home.

The two were in the car for a while and Kathy said when she arrived at home around 5.45 pm her sister looked upset while sitting in the man’s car. “She looked very vex as though she wanted to come out of the car,” Kathy, breaking into tears, said from her home. The next thing, Kathy said, she heard a sound like someone was crying.  She and her mother checked but saw nothing.  Soon after, however, there was a bang on the front glass door and Alexis-Yearwood shouting that the man had a gun. Kathy said she and her mother put up a near 20-minute struggle with the man until she (Kathy) got the gun.  “When I got the gun I slapped him twice in his face and then I threw away the gun,” the petite Kathy said. But when the man returned after he pretended to have left, Kathy said the struggle became too much for her mother and herself since the man is “a giant.” The struggle got worse for Kathy who in her heroic effort received a cut on  her third finger on the right hand.  “I tried so hard to help but he was just too strong,” Kathy said.

Neighbours were called but by the time the man was subdued he had already achieved his goal, to stab Alexis-Yearwood. She received wounds to the face, the heart and neck.  “I kept begging Donna to hold on,” Kathy said wanting to blame herself for her sister’s death but was chided by her mother and other siblings. By that time a party of officers headed by Sr Supt Waldron Bishop and including ASP Mervyn Phillip, Insp Ancil Coa, Sgt David Abraham, Cpl Simeon James and others had arrived and seized the revolver, four rounds of ammunition and the knives. The suspect was taken to the Mount Hope Hospital while Kathy said she accompanied her sister in the ambulance but that she died there after CPR attempts. “Alexis-Yearwood had moved into her mother’s home last Saturday after four failed attempts to leave a man, on whom she had spent lots of money. Kathy also said her sister planned to leave her job to do a three-year bible study course, but that a man did not want her to. Sgt Abraham of the Barataria/El Socorro CID is investigating.