Mum recounts final hours before daughter’s death

A mother has told a court she became frantic after hearing reports of screams at her St Thomas home, days before learning that her daughter had been found dead, as the murder trial of Roger Delisle Sealy continues.

Samantha Bristol recalled that the last time she saw her daughter Samara alive was hours before she caught a flight from New York to head to Barbados on November 10, 2021.

Days later, the police would inform her that her child’s body had been found in Mangrove, St Thomas.

The witness took the stand as the trial against her former boyfriend Roger Delisle Sealy continued in the No. 4 Supreme Court before Justice Laurie-Anne Smith-Bovell. 

Sealy of Airy Cot, St Thomas, has pleaded not guilty to murdering Samara Bristol between November 16 and 21, 2021.

Samantha Bristol told the court that she was living in the US but had a home in Airy Cot, which was under renovation as it was being changed from wood and wall and being extended. She was financing these renovations solely, while Sealy was providing the labour.

On November 16, 2021, she recalled having a conversation with Samara earlier in the day and told the court that before 10 that night, she received a call from someone in Barbados who told her that they heard screams coming from her St Thomas home. She said she contacted a male who lived nearby and asked him to go and check.

She testified: “He was doing something and I told him ‘can you go now and hurry?’ because I was frantic at the moment but he did go. I told him [to] tell me if he sees or hears anyone. He told me he was going to drive over because he doesn’t live too far. I told him not to get off the cell phone. He got there and he says, ‘It’s dark’. He said ‘The glass door at the front is broken’. I heard him calling her name. I told him try to see if the door is open because the glass is already broken. He said ‘There’s no light’ and then he said ‘There’s nobody’.”

Bristol stated that after she told him to call the police, she heard the man say: “There’s blood.”

She continued: “I completely lost it so I hung up and called every single police station on the island and at the time of the night I assumed the American Embassy was closed but I was calling them too because at this point I did not know what was going on and my daughter was never not where she was supposed to be.”

She called back the man and he informed her that the police and fire service were there as “the house was on fire”.

The witness said that she attempted to get a flight home as soon as possible but, due to COVID restrictions, could not immediately fly out. She arrived in Barbados a few days later.

She recalled that on November 21, police reached out and said they had someone in custody and that they had found Samara.

“I asked if she was okay and they said ‘no’. They said they found Samara’s body. We drove there and they were very adamant because I wanted to see the body and they kept insisting ‘No, you don’t want to see’,” Bristol stated, adding that she identified pictures taken by police of tattoos on the deceased’s body and a ring she had given her daughter.

The witness told the court that she and Sealy had been together for a few years and that the relationship had become rocky around the same time as her daughter’s death. 

She testified that he was coming and going from the house while Samara was there, as she would hear him or see him via video during their conversations.

She did not lock him out of the house or give any instructions for him to be locked out, Bristol said. 

During cross-examination by defence attorney Sian Lange, Bristol said they had been in a relationship for five years and that Sealy had lived there during that time. She stated that when work had commenced at the house, the intention had been for her and the accused to live there together. Adding that the relationship had become rocky prior to 2021, she said that they were still talking.

She said Samara had indicated that she changed a lock on the interior of the house. The witness could not say if the deceased had changed the locks to the front of the house.

The witness said she had also tried calling and texting Sealy on the night of November 16.

Acting Director of Public Prosecutions Alliston Seale SC and State Counsel Paul Prescod are prosecuting the trial, which is being heard by a 12-member jury.

(JB)