Man admits to killing wife

Allan Alston Belle has admitted taking the life of his Guyanese wife over seven years ago.

Belle, a landscaper from St Barnabas Heights, St Michael was charged with murdering Brenda Belle nee’ Duncan on April 30, 2013 at Cutting Road, Haggatt Hall, St Michael. Today he told the High Court he was not guilty of murder but guilty of manslaughter.

A postmortem revealed that the 64-year-old woman – who was originally from Charlestown, Guyana – received 45 injuries about her body and bled to death from multiple slashes and stabs.

The deceased and the now convicted man met sometime in 1999 when she first arrived in Barbados and they were married soon after. She moved into the convicted man’s residence but travelled frequently between the two countries.

She last left the island, and her husband’s home in December 2012 but on returning on April 20, 2013 she went to the Cutting Road, Haggatt Hall, St Michael residence of another man.

Reading the facts of the case today Deputy Director of Public Prosecutions Alliston Seale revealed that after Belle discovered his wife was back on the island he contacted her and she informed him that she was staying at the home of a friend at Westbury Road, St Michael. However, she would still visit Belle’s house to cook though at the time she did not “cohabit” and always left on finishing her tasks.

On one occasion, according to the prosecutor, Belle who was 58-years-old at the time followed her and discovered where she was residing.

On the night of the deadly incident Brenda was at the other man’s home, in bed watching television but she soon fell asleep.  According to the facts it was sometime after 9 p.m. when the man heard a voice that he recognized to be that of the accused, outside his house, calling out for Brenda.

The man did not answer and the person called again.

Belle, who was armed with a cutlass, started to knock on the front windows prompting the man to wake Brenda and alert her before they ran to the back of the house. Belle gained entry by knocking out the glass of a window. The two ran into the yard and through a gate, through a kitchen garden, to the right side of the house. The man was able to jump over a glavanise fence which was about three feet high but Brenda was unable to jump despite the man’s efforts to help her over. She reportedly told the man to leave her, when she was unable to hide elsewhere, and he did so .

Belle made his way to the backyard and inflicted a number of chops to his wife’s body.

Police soon arrived, investigations started and a doctor pronounced death. Two cutlasses and several other articles were found at the scene.

Belle was later seen with a container in his hand on a path to his home which was “ablaze” at the time. He was taken to the police station, where he started to “throw up”. He informed police that he had ingested a substance used to kill wood ants.

After getting medical attention and being released from the Queen Elizabeth Hospital’s Ward B5 in early May he was questioned.

He declined getting a lawyer saying “I ain’t want none.” Told about the police suspicions that he was the culprit of the attack and caused the woman’s death, he replied, “Yes I do it . . . . Yes it is something I do. So it don’t make sense hiding from it.” Belle then dictated a statement to police.

In that statement he said he left home riding his bicycle and went into Cutting Road in search of his wife. “I know she was living out there because I follow she . . . before but I ain’t know the exact house she went in.”

He said he first knocked at a “wrong house” and then knocked on another house next door, “I holler for Brenda and a man voice answer me from inside the house and said ‘hold on’.”

He said he had a cutlass that he had stashed at the top of the road. “I chop out the windows to the front house, climb in . . . walk through the house . . . didn’t see nobody and I went to the backdoor. When I get through the gate I see she out by the paling with a long knife in she hand. She [come] at me and I shift she. She fall down and I start to chop she up. She hold on pun my shirt and pull me towards she . . . I manage to get way from she . . .  get on my bicycle and ride and went home.

“When I left she she was by the paling on the ground, I ain’t know how many chops I give she but I give she a lot.

“I went home, changed my pants. I had an oil lamp there, but I ain’t know I knock it down. I put on the white suit that I marry in, I went by the front road. I take up a container I had something in that I does kill wood ants and drink some. I duh want to kill myself. A little while later I see my house burning, I ain’t see nobody go to my house,” the statement read by Seale said.

Belle’s case continues on November 23 in the No. 2 Supreme Court before Justice Randall Worrell.

The now convicted man is represented by Andrew Pilgrim, Q.C.