Natasha Thompson said things were quite normal between herself and her man Sunday morning, October 5.
They had got up together in Lime Bottom, near Ocho Rios, St Ann and had been talking about life. They had had a normal night together, she said.
They had talked and he sent her to have her bath before he had his. Nothing was out of the way, Ms Thompson said. But within an hour he was dead, founding hanging from an Almond Tree in a gully near to their home in Lime Bottom. Police are treating it as a suicide.
Dead is Gary Heath, 27, labourer and handy man. He had lived in Kingston and Runaway Bay for a while before moving in with Ms Thompson at her family home.
Mr Heath and Ms Thomas had been living together for just days under a year and she said from time to time in recent month he complained about not having work and hence the money to push their life along and be independent.
She said on Sunday morning, he had again commented on the unfinished house they had next to her mother’s house where they lived. “He was stressed when he didn’t have money and sometime him would say him can’t bother with life,” Ms Thompson said.
She said on Sunday morning as they both sat by the foundation of the house they were building he told her he was sorry that he didn’t have money for their house and that he couldn’t be bothered. She sought to comfort him telling him not to worry as things were okay and would get better.
She said he told her to go ahead and bath and later he came into the house and got some rum cream and went back outside where he was drinking and playing music on his phone.
When she came out he was gone.
She didn’t make much of it until she saw a ‘please call me” on her phone from Heath and didn’t see him around.
When she went to a neighbour, she was told by the neighbour that she had been told by him that he felt he would “do something”. However, the neighbour said she was unable to speak with him. She asked Miss Thompson to call.
She said she tried his phone several times but didn’t get a response. Shortly after, a relative came with the news that Heath was found dead.
A day later, the death was still sinking in on Ms Thompson. On Monday she was going with one of her two children – the couple had no children together — to get counselling. She said she had been unable to tell her five-year-old child who called Neath “Daddy” what happened.
