The last screams of Keisha Sutherland, 28, a badly abused woman, rang out from her home on Wednesday morning at the corner of Bocotora and Racoon Streets. She lay in a pool of her blood, fatally wounded after having been maniacally stabbed 20 times by the father of two of her four children – one two years old and the other just eleven months old.
Keisha, a Rastafarian also known as “Empress,” was stabbed to death yesterday morning, Wednesday, January 3, between 4:00 a.m. and 5:00 a.m., and her assailant, police say, is still on the run.
The multiple stab wounds to Keisha Sutherland’s back, side and chest were evidence of a vicious anger, and today the father of her children, Louie Anthony Gentle, Sr., a.k.a. “ Louie Ganzie,” 29, a well-known reggae artist, is wanted for her murder.
Sadly, her murder marks the third such incident in just about three weeks. Nine days before Christmas, on December 16, Anna Maria Magdalena Basto was in her home in Orange Walk Town when her husband savagely stabbed her with a screwdriver as many as 32 times, and then slashed her throat with a surgical blade.
On Christmas Day, a Karl Heusner Memorial Hospital employee, Carol Gabourel, 32, was stabbed to death by her husband, Cecil Gabourel. Then came the murder of Keisha Sutherland on Wednesday—only eight days later.
Police issued a report late yesterday saying that sometime around 6:30 a.m. Wednesday, they were called to an area on Racoon Street, near the intersection with Bocotora Street, where they observed Sutherland’s body on the living room floor in the upper flat of a board house.
Keisha began her relationship with Louie Ganzie nine years ago, and it has reportedly been a stormy ride for her since. On Wednesday Amandala spoke with Keisha’s grandmother, Gilda Johnson, 63, who told us that she was awakened by a noise coming from Keisha’s room.
Johnson said she recalled hearing Keisha shout, “Aye-yah-eye,” in pain. She got out of her bed and rushed to the living room, where she saw her granddaughter lying in a pool of blood and Ganzie standing next to Keisha’s body.
“You nuh done til you kill ah,” she said she told Ganzie.
“See weh ah mean,” he uttered. He then picked up a bundle with the clothes he had at the house, grabbed his bicycle and rode off, and he has been a wanted man since.
The grandmother said that she was so shocked, she froze and sat at the window staring at Keisha’s body for a very long time until a neighbor found out what had happened and called the police.
When police arrived shortly afterwards, they transported Keisha to the KHMH, where she was pronounced dead on arrival.
Relatives say that Keisha never told her mother, Deborah Peters, anything of Ganzie’s abuse, but she told her sisters and brothers.
According to her sister, Patrina Copius, around 10:00 p.m. on Tuesday, January 2, Keisha and Ganzie had an argument. Ganzie got a call on a cell phone belonging to a close family friend. The friend, a female, had taken her cell phone over to the Johnson’s house so that Ganzie could answer the call.
After the phone call, Ganzie began arguing with the friend, and during that argument, she allegedly told him things he did not want to hear, regarding his relationship with Keisha.
After the woman left, Ganzie turned his anger on Keisha.
Patrina said that Keisha tried to avoid Ganzie and went over to her (Patrina’s) house, leaving her two children and three others she was babysitting in the care of her grandmother. But she returned home to her grandmother’s house about two hours later.
When she returned home, Ganzie was still there waiting, and their battle of words continued into the wee morning hours.
Johnson told us that she did not hear the argument, because she had fallen asleep. However, some neighbors in the immediate area told the newspaper that they heard the argument and then they heard a woman crying.
Her death could have been avoided, said her brother, Leroy Copius, yesterday. Leroy told Amandala that he knew of his sister’s abusive relationship with Ganzie and feared the worst, but never thought it would have ended so tragically.
In September 2006, the court intervened in their dispute and granted a restraining order against Louie Ganzie.
Relatives said that he repeatedly hit her and after the last incident, left Keisha with a blood clot in her eye and a swollen face. He ignored the restraining order, relatives said, and for the sake of the children Keisha allowed him to stay.
Gradually, Ganzie apparently moved himself back into the family, even though, according to relatives, Keisha wanted nothing to do with him.
Ganzie allegedly had been accusing Keisha of having a relationship with other men, but that was never the case, her relatives contend.
Keisha is not the first woman that Louie Ganzie has abused in this manner. Cheryl Barrow, 30, who mothered two of Ganzie’s older children, including Louie Ganzie, Jr., told us that in 1999 Ganzie stabbed her 17 times, leaving her with huge scars on her neck, hand, and shoulder, almost killing her.
On April 7, 1999, Ganzie, then 22, was charged with attempted murder, dangerous harm and use of deadly means of harm. (See Amandala #1541 dated April 11, 1999, “Spurned ex-lover stabs woman in neck,” on page 24.)
Barrow recollected what had happened to her that Easter Monday:
“[Ganzie] came and asked me if I wasn’t going back home, because I had moved out of the house. I told him I wasn’t going back home and that this is one morning he would have to do what he has to do, because I won’t go back home with him. I told him that I got tired of him beating me for nothing, and the man left and came back.
“When he came back, I didn’t know he had a dagger knife on him. I walked into my dad’s house and he hauled me back, and when he hauled me back he started to juk up me. He juk me up in my neck, my hands – see I have a ‘L’ right in my hand here, and in my throat. I nearly died. I got six units of blood.”
Barrow saidthat a month ago, she spoke with Keisha and strongly advised her to leave Ganzie, because she could tell that Keisha was being abused as well.