Dequan Pyle, the labourer who was fatally struck with a piece of wood on Saturday morning in front his Laing Avenue, Georgetown home, was allegedly killed because those who attacked him did not approve of his friendship with someone else, relatives said on Monday.
This resulted in a feud that had been ongoing for the past four years.
And even though he was allegedly threatened a number of times during this period, no action was taken.
The News Room spoke to Melissa Henry, an aunt of the dead man, and she related the events leading up to the murder.
“The morning of the incident, I was awoken by loud explosions coming from outside on the roadway. There was like bottles and stones and so being thrown to the roof of our premises,” Henry said.
To check what was going on, Henry said she ventured outside of her yard where she learnt of her niece being involved in a confrontation during which she was badly injured.
“It was like seven to eight of them and all of them had sharp tools, brick in them hands and so on. My nephew (Pyle) know them well…These people is problem. So he just turn to his sister, he hold her and grab her by her arm and he start to like push her back through the gate,” she explained.
“Just as he (Pyle) turn to push her, one of the guys pick up a wood and he just run in behind my nephew and dealt him a lash behind his head and he step back like one two times and he fall back,” Henry said.
Police Headquarters on Saturday said Pyle was killed while trying to part a fight between his two sisters and some other women in the neighbourhood.
It was alleged that the male partners of the other women also intervened and one of them, who was armed with a piece of wood, lashed Pyle to his head.
Pyle collapsed and the suspect then dropped the wood and he and the others began to pelt bottles and bricks before escaping.
According to Henry, Pyle and the suspects are known to each other.
She said while they had previously exchanged words, they never got physical.
Following the incident, the house of alleged killer was set on fire in Laing Avenue. It was completely destroyed.
Henry said her family has nothing to do with the fire.
“We have nothing to do with that…It may be looking like it coming from us, but we are not the only individual around here who and the suspect have something going on…We don’t have a hand in that,” she noted.
A post-mortem on Monday revealed that Pyle died as a result of a fractured skull.
Police are on the hunt for the 30-year-old suspect.
