Yesterday, shortly after 1 pm Police Corporal Sean James entered the doctor's office where his common law wife, Dorna Noel worked and killed her with a gunshot to her head before turning the gun on himself. He was 41, she was 42. I learnt from the news reports that he lived four streets away from me, in what Americans would call the suburbs, a typical middle class neighbourhood. For a few hours the story dominated the local news before being submerged by other events - like the power struggle in the opposition UNC and the attempted murder of a Bristish couple vacationing in Tobago.
Sean James joins the long line of Trinidadian men who reinforce the belief that Caribbean men cannot cope with 'tabanca'. West Indian men handle break ups badly. We often joke about this, but it is a serious issue. Last year, at the Royal Castle Outlet in Curepe mere metres away from where James and Noel died, Ricardo Jason Duncan, 32, a precepted security officer killed his ex-girlfriend of several years, Adwoa Nefertiti Grant, 25, then himself. In March 2008 a popular Bar-B-Que vendor, Himragh Sookhai 48, of Cunupia who accused his wife of being unfaithful, gave his four-year-old son Lanate, an agricultural insecticide to drink and then took a dose himself.
The irony of course is that West Indian men's penchant for infidelity is notorious. So much so that it is normal to ask a man after seeing him with a woman, if that was his 'bona fide' (wife), or his 'deputy' (mistress). It has become part of our culture, something I as a West Indian woman accept. But when the tables are turned the same men find accepting adultery from their women unacceptable.
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