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Is Land Dispute At Heart of Last Week's Desruisseaux Killing?
Is a Land Dispute at the Heart of Last Week’s Desruisseaux Killing?
By Keryn Nelson
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It was hard to tell whether the suffused stillness on Wednesday afternoon had anything to do with the horror that overtook Desruisseaux five days earlier or whether most of Elias and Muriel Louisy’s neighbours were at work.
The elderly couple, 76 and 73 respectively, having lived several years in the UK, had returned home over 30 years ago. For some time they had successfully operated a disco called Black Beauty. Now, like the home closest to it, the entertainment centre was cordoned off by yellow caution tape placed there by police investigators.
From talking with various people I encountered this week, it appears the couple were well known in the community. One elderly gentleman who lives just five minutes from the Louisy residence acknowledged, “Yeah, we knew them well. And for him to die that way . . . it just is not right.” His wife did not speak but the way she shook her head and the look in her eyes spoke depressing volumes.
Not far from where I had talked with the shocked couple a man stood at the doorway of a tiny wooden shop crammed with various consumer items. A plus-sized woman sat behind the counter. The man told me he was simply passing through; that he did not live in the community. As for the presumed shop attendant, she let me know she was in no mood to talk about what had happened to the Louisys or possible reasons for it.
I approached another woman standing idly near a larger shop that offered a clear view to the Louisy residence. When I told her why I had come to Desruisseaux she understandingly nodded her head and asked me to hold on while she attended to something inside a neighbouring house. She re-emerged seconds later and invited me to follow her into the shop and then inside a room that appeared to be a seamstress’ workshop, judging by the bulky sewing equipment propped up on a long table and the two or three desks on which were large spools of thread and related paraphernalia. She sat on a chair while she talked to me about the Louisy couple.
Desruisseaux was the setting for a deadly home invasion last week.
Every Friday morning around 9 o’clock, she said, they would leave for Castries. But on the morning of May 17 she and her work colleague (she referred to her as “the worker”) heard loud barks coming from the Louisy residence. Then came the chilling sound of a woman screaming in distress. Said my source: “From the time the dogs started barking it seemed the person was there. I heard the noise like something was happening although I didn’t really know what.” Her colleague wanted to investigate but my source, the shopowner, thought it safer to seek help.
“People are saying I am bad because I did not immediately try to see what was happening. But that’s not true, I called to people. I told them to come because something was happenning. They came right away. They looked all under the bush. When something happen like that, and I don’t know what is happening, I have to go and call for help.”
The rescue party encountered Mrs Louisy desperately running out of her house covered in blood and yelling for help. Upon entering the residence, my source recalled, they were shocked at the sight of Mr. Louisy lying on the floor. “When I saw the man, only his hand was moving. Everywhere there was blood. His head was swollen.” Her own hands moved instinctively to her head then subconsciously down to her waist when she said, as for Mrs. Louisy: “People say a piece of her head was chopped off, but I did not see that.” No one in the rescue party seemed to have any idea who in the community might’ve committed so horrible a crime.
I asked about the Louisy’s neighbours; how they were coping with the tragedy. “The worker, she went to the hospital but yesterday she came back home. She already had so much going on and when that thing happen her heart started hurting. Some people, when they see blood they fall sick.” She paused, placed both hands on her chest, as if to reassure herself it was pumping normally. “I did not jump,” she went on. “That can happen to anybody, not him [the butchered Mr. Louisy] alone.”
My seamstress source described Mr. Louisy and his wife as introverted. “These people are not people that really come out of their house. The only time you will see them is if they come and buy fish or bread, or they going to town.”
Since my visit to Desruisseaux, members from Mr Louisy’s family, who also live in the area, have publicly claimed the incident may be related to long-running land disputes. Mr. Louisy’s neice, Roseline, said on TV: “We have a lot of land and he [the deceased] told me that the people on the land, they don’t want to understand that the land is his and they always telling him they will kill him.” My seamstress source had earlier hinted at the dispute. However, she did not believe it was related to the land disagreements because, she reasoned, “So long that land giving trouble. Not now, when the man get old, the man cannot even bend down well, they would come and do that!”
At the time of writing, Muriel Louisy was in stable condition at the reportedly unstable St Jude hospital in Vieux Fort. The police say three suspects have been taken into custody. According to my main Desruisseaux source, the men have all had encounters with Elias Steve Louisy over land ownership. On Wednesday afternoon, a relative of the Louisy couple and a UK resident contacted me to express her gratitude for my professional interest in the matter: “Thanks much, but we also want justice for our uncle. He did not deserve that.”
It’s a cry too many times heard in Saint Lucia—to small avail.
