The Fancy man who died at his house on Thursday allegedly after setting it ablaze told his daughter to take her son out of the house, moments before the incident, she had told iWitness News.
The dead man is Carlos Stay, 67, whose home is located near the “Welcome to Fancy” sign in the North Windward village.
One of Stay’s daughters, who asked not to be named in this article, told iWitness News that the fire occurred around 9:30 a.m.
She said that she got her children ready for school that morning, but her eldest child, a 10-year-old boy, stayed at home as he was recovering from an illness.
The woman said she bathed the child and then had a shower herself then went into her room.
She said that while inside her room, she heard her father calling her son by his name.
The woman told iWitness News that she told her father this her son was sleeping.
“He said, ‘Well wake him up and you carry him outside because me going do something’,” the woman told iWitness News.
She said she thought that her father was going to spray an insecticide because there were a lot of mosquitoes around.
“I end up and see him with gas throwing in the walkway in the room and he had matches,” the woman told iWitness News.
“I had my son, so I tried to think about my son, ‘So I told him, ‘… go outside and I tried to go back into my room to get my things them, my documents.
“My dad said, ‘You nah hear me say alyo go outside? Alyo go outside and none ah alyo nah come back in here’,” the daughter further said.
“So I tried to go back outside to let my mom and my boyfriend know what was happening. And my father ended up and say, ‘You all nah come in here. All ah you stay out there’ and he light the fire.”
She said they tried to call neighbours to get help to put out the fire and they tried to disconnect the electricity so that the fire not spread into the house.”
The woman said one of her neighbours came with a hose, which they joined to the one at her house, but it was still too short to reach the bedroom in which Stay had locked himself.
She said she decided to open the windows so that the smoke could come out of the house and they then poured buckets of water all over the house.
The woman told iWitness News that her father had had two strokes but it was not true that he had attempted to self-harm earlier in the week.
“In the past, he had said he would kill himself but he later said he had been joking. So, it’s like I and everybody else didn’t take him that seriously that he would end up and eventually do this…
“I feel bad and sad. I didn’t expect my father to do this and my son ended up and witnessed this. I am worried about my children, how they are going to take this.”
iWitness News was reliably informed that there had been concerns about Stay’s mental health recently.
The now-deceased man had been having some physical health challenges after suffering at least two strokes over the last five years, one source said.
He lived in the house with other relatives, including his wife, children and grandchildren.
A fire tender responded to the scene and among the police officers who were deployed were detectives from the Major Crime Unit, which investigates unnatural deaths, including homicides and suspected homicides.
Several residents of the village gathered in the street outside the house as police officers, led by Superintendent of Police Hesran Ballantyne, who is also a resident of the village, coordinated the police response.
Now why would a 67 year old grandfather kill himself? These are things the ULP government has to answer for. People are at the end of their Latin because of them.