Shas­tri Boodan

The tiny com­mu­ni­ty of Pal­too Road, Todd’s Road, in Cen­tral Trinidad was rocked yes­ter­day morn­ing, as res­i­dents awoke to the news of a mur­der sui­cide af­ter An­na-Marie Di­az, 47, was bru­tal­ly mur­dered by her com­mon-law hus­band Amar Zoongie, 43, who lat­er took his own life.

Ac­cord­ing to po­lice, res­i­dent Mar­tin Dhan­raj went in­to the bush­es around 6 yes­ter­day morn­ing to tend to his crops when he dis­cov­ered Zoongie’s body, with a bot­tle near­by.

He alert­ed oth­ers in the com­mu­ni­ty, who con­tact­ed the po­lice.

Di­az’s chil­dren told Guardian Me­dia that just as Zoongie’s body was found, her son was try­ing to reach her by phone to babysit for him.

When she did not an­swer de­spite his re­peat­ed calls, he sent one of her younger chil­dren to go to her house to con­tact her and the grue­some dis­cov­ery was made.

“My broth­er (Nigel) called her phone, she usu­al­ly babysits for him. He lives two hous­es away, when she was not an­swer­ing, he came over and looked in the bed­room win­dow. He sent my younger broth­er in­side through the win­dow and they dis­cov­ered she was dead,” the woman’s daugh­ter, Ali­cia Samuel, said.

Di­az was found in a bed­room with mul­ti­ple head and up­per body in­juries.

Po­lice sus­pect she was beat­en to death by Zoongie, who fled and lat­er con­sumed a poi­so­nous sub­stance.

Samuel said Zoongie had been go­ing around telling vil­lagers that he would kill Di­az.

She said the cou­ple had been to­geth­er for 17 years and had one son, aged 15.

The griev­ing daugh­ter said her moth­er had end­ed her re­la­tion­ship with Zoongie sev­er­al years ago and had asked him to leave the house. How­ev­er, the 43-year-old labour­er de­mand­ed that he stay in the house. He lived in a sep­a­rate room while Di­az slept in a room at the bot­tom of the house.

Samuel, one of Di­az’s sev­en chil­dren, said, “We have to cope and get over with it and we have to be there for one an­oth­er. My moth­er was al­ways a lov­ing per­son. We did not be­lieve that she would be tak­en away from us so.”

Samuel said she would re­mem­ber her moth­er for her kind­ness and de­scribed her as a “re­al dar­ling with a soft heart.”

Po­lice said Di­az en­dured phys­i­cal abuse from Zoongie for years and re­cent­ly de­cid­ed to move on with her life al­though he re­fused to leave the house.