Less than a week after she celebrated her 22nd birthday, US citizen Samantha Darbassie was murdered by her boyfriend, who then took his own life at her Princes Town home Friday night.
Darbassie was originally from New York, but lived most of her life in T&T. Her boyfriend, Clayton Charles, 30, of Moruga, was staying at the Darbassie home at the time of the incident.
Police reports stated that the couple got into an argument on Friday night during which Charles chopped Darbassie before he took his own life. Darbassie was pronounced dead at the scene.
Yesterday, Darbassie’s mother, Cheryl, speaking with the Sunday Guardian at her Knolly Street, Princes Town, home recounted the events leading up to her second child’s death.
She said at 10 am her daughter and Charles had an argument over her texting on her tablet. Sometime later, she said, she noticed Samantha was not at home.
She said the 22-year-old was liming with neighbours, and Charles was sitting in the gallery with her when his brother came and spoke with him.
“I left to go by the parlour out the road about 9 o’clock. She was by the neighbour plaiting her friend’s hair,” she said.
Cheryl said around 10 pm, she was in the parlour using a gambling machine when her neighbour’s son told her that her daughter was dead.
“The little boy just run up the hill and say ‘Aunty Cheryl, Samantha dead.’ I ask him what madness he talking about, I just see my child by the neighbour. When I run down the hill, I see she just lying on the living-room floor,” she said.
There was a bloody cutlass lying nearby and a knife next to her body.
Cheryl said neighbours told her they had heard Samantha’s screams. The young woman also ran several metres before she died.
Cheryl said she went into a room and found the man hanging.
She pointed to the place on the wall where Charles had secured the wire he used to hang himself, which was covered in bloody fingerprints.
She said the couple had been in an on-again-off-again relationship for the past two years.
“He used to get real jealous anytime she text anybody. But she was a well-known girl, she had plenty friends here and in New York.”
However, when the Sunday Guardian visited the Charles’ home in Moruga, his Aunt Yvette told a different story.
She said the couple was having problems. Yvette said it was Samantha who was jealous. Charles’ mother, Joanne, said she never expected her eldest son would do something like this.