By TANYA SMITH-CARTWRIGHT
tsmith-cartwright@tribunemedia.net
A SINGLE mother of seven is dead following a suspected domestic dispute in Abaco.
According to a relative, Angeleta Pritchard was beaten to death in front of her four-month-old child at her home on Boxing Day.
Police said they were called to a home in Crown Haven after 1pm on Saturday, December 26, where they found Ms Pritchard’s lifeless body. The Royal Bahamas Police Force said additional inquiries revealed that the woman “had an altercation with a male earlier that day” and was later found lifeless at her home with “injuries to the face”.
The victim, who had just turned 36 on Christmas Day, was reportedly beaten to death with a blunt object, The Tribune was told. A man is currently in police custody, assisting with the investigation.
When she spoke to The Tribune on Monday, Ms Pritchard’s sister, Kendria “Star” Russell, was distraught. She believes her sister was killed because the suspected assailant could not handle rejection.
Ms Russell said: “This is about jealousy and domestic violence. He didn’t want to leave. I wasn’t there to say exactly what the argument was about, but, knowing my sister, I assume that she said that she didn’t want him around anymore and he wouldn’t take it.”
“How she had her last kid, she had cartilage damage so he probably held her down.
“He had to have done that because my sister is a fighter. She would not have gone down without a fight. For him to do something like that, he had her in a vulnerable position. And, the baby was right there so I know she was thinking she didn’t want anything to happen to her baby.”
Ms Pritchard had been in a relationship with the suspected assailant and ended it, according to her sister, because of his jealous, obsessive behaviour that often led to violence. He was not the father of her four-month-old, this newspaper was told.
The victim’s sister continued: “She always said he was short in temper. He always used to go on her job harassing her and coming to her house at 3 o’clock in the morning disturbing her. He wouldn’t let her go.”
Ms Russell said her sister was a hard-working single mother “hustling for her kids, day in and day out”.
“They had the best,” she said. “She did not deserve to go down the way she went down. She was always a free spirit, loving and fun person to be around.
Ms Russell said that seven children were left behind. She now left the matter in God’s hands. “Whatever God does is well done,” she said. “I love you my sister and I promise you that your children will have the best possible life and (we will love) the way you would love them.”
Ms Pritchard is a 2002 graduate of S C Bootle High School in Abaco. She worked as an assistant manager at Cooper’s Town Marine and also worked as a security guard.
Comments
joeblow 3 years, 3 months ago
Single mother of seven?
Tragic!
John 3 years, 3 months ago
What is tragic about it? Bahamians on the family islands still have large families and engage in ‘common law’ relationships.
mandela 3 years, 3 months ago
What is tragic is that so many men today are nothing but little boys, who act like little girls, having temper tantrums, these men ( little boys) can't have a discussion or disagreement or be rejected without fighting or hurting someone else, and acting as if they own their partners, they are mostly G-average men who can only hold on to their smarter women with violence. Why would a woman with a four-month baby be having another relationship with someone different so soon after giving birth? Today's women and men are too needy, they can't live alone for a minute, they MUST always be in a relationship with someone taking on someone else's problem. They need to stop being an atheist, they need to find God the Father, God the Son, God the Holy Ghost. Amen.
John 3 years, 3 months ago
Four Hundred years of abuse and conditioning. Under slavery, where God or marriage or families did not matter. The slave master always had his way. He can come in the middle of the night, rape and assault a married woman in the front of her children in the middle of the night. He could beat and torture the men and fighting back would mean certain death or even more punishment and he could also rape underage girls and force them to ‘breed.’ And massa could also break-up and separate families at will, selling them off like cattle to other plantations. In fact ‘buc’ slaves were loaned or rented to other slave massa’s to breed or even to do manly chores in massas own bedroom. Did the marriage and matrimonial bed matter there? And many were carted away not knowing what they left behind. A son, a daughter, twins even. Not even hearing the painful screams of a woman in childbirth. Theirs even. And all, all of this was done under and with the blessings of the God we serve. Is this really ‘Amen?’
rosiepi 3 years, 3 months ago
For pity's sake the tragedy is the fate of her children and circumstances of her murder. And four hundred years of abuse and conditioning? Try back to the dawn of man. This 'John" ignores the plight of 7 orphans, and sees in this tragedy another opportunity for his treatise on the evils of slavery that he thinks will allow him to ignore/excuse his own culpability in the prevalence of domestic abuse. And all the while a family mourns their loved one at the hands of her abuser.
John 3 years, 3 months ago
‘ . The first rank among the evils of slavery must be given to its Moral influence. This is throughout debasing. Common language teaches this. We can say nothing more insulting of another, than that he is slavish. To possess the spirit of a slave is to have sunk to the lowest depths. We can apply to slavery no worse name than its own. Men have always shrunk instinctively from this state, as the most degraded. No punishment, save death, has been more dreaded, and to avoid it death has often been endured.’. William Ellery Channing.
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