Further trauma has come to the small farming community of Aboukir with the apparent suicide of a man accused of viciously slaying his ex-lover.Anthony Gillespie, 37, was found dead in the community’s water tank on Wednesday, November 5, days after he allegedly hacked Dorothy James to death metres from her home Friday afternoon, October 31.Gillespie fled the scene and was being sought by police. Area residents were looking out for him especially after he reportedly sent threats to two of Ms James’ family members.It is the way that 37-year-old Gillespie, also called ‘Stitchin’, killed himself that has been hurting the community.
‘Him wicked. Him want to punish wi even when him dead,” said one resident who complained to the North Coast Times.
The residents said Gilespie, a farmer originally from Grants Mountain, knew that the whole community of Aboukir would suffer for water for a time after he killed himself in the tank. They point out that he would have had to deliberately climb some 30 feet up the tank to throw himself in and drown. “Him know say him woulda hurt wi is him laas lick this,” said a resident.
Though Gillespie’s body was discovered at the tank Tuesday morning, people in the community believe, based on the state of decomposition, that he might have killed himself from as early as Saturday or Sunday. Some feel sickened they might have been drinking the water for days while the body decomposed.A resident of the community who went to the tank to fetch water Wednesday, detected the odour and made enquiries. The swollen, decaying body was later found floating in the tank.After that, all through the week and weekend people were unable to get water and with no river nearby they had to depend on friends and relatives bringing water from Murray Mountain, and other communities even as far as Alexandria and Inverness to provide water.The people of the are feel that Gillespie chose that way to kill himself to spite them and cut off their water supply. On Friday Parish Council operatives had let out the water from the tank but it had not been cleaned.The people of Aboukir believe it will be some time before they will remove from their consciousness the pain Gillespie has caused and also sometime to get belief that their water is good again.
