ROSES VALLEY, St Elizabeth – The police in this small St Elizabeth district will today continue to probe yesterday’s drowning of 75-year-old Harold McLeish and the wounding of his 73-year-old wife Margaret McLeish.

The Constabulary Communication Network (CCN), the police’s information arm, reported that about 8 o’clock yesterday morning, Mrs McLeish was found suffering from a number of wounds inside the couple’s bedroom, while the body of her husband was found shortly after in a water tank behind the house.

Residents of Powell Town, the section of Roses Valley where the McLeishs lived, theorise that Mr McLeish wounded his wife then committed suicide.

Yesterday, Mrs McLeish’s daughter, Bethelda Robinson, who lives at the house, was so shaken by the incident that her blood pressure had soared and her doctor ordered her to stay away from the house for at least a day.

Robinson said she found her mother moaning, limping off her bed, sections of which was soaked in blood and vomit, and barely conscious of what had happened to her.

“Mi seh ‘Mama, mi si a cut on yuh hand, a who cut yuh?’ an she seh ‘Mi nuh know,'” Robinson said quietly. “She even a ask mi wha happen.”

Robinson said the couple had no argument that she was aware of and said she did not hear any sounds coming from the couple’s bedroom which is adjacent to hers. She said she had gone to tell her mother that her brother, who had spent the night with them, had called to say he had returned to Kingston safely.

She said her mother had a wound on the back of her hand, and at least two wounds to her head, one very deep, from which a lot of blood flowed. While Robinson and others arranged to get Mrs McLeish to the doctor, everyone wondered where her husband was.

Marvin Blake, one of several residents who use the water tank located behind the McLeishs’ house, said he had gone to fetch water when he realised that the rope was missing from the pan used to pull the water from the tank, and he immediately made a report to Robinson.

Blake said that when he went back to the house, he saw what appeared to be feet inside the tank and when he took a closer look he realised that it was Mr McLeish’s body inside. The man’s slippers were found leaned up against a step at the front of the tank.

Yesterday, residents who had gathered at the home of the elderly couple were in shock.

Alphonso Green, a resident, said the elderly man had on more than one occasion said he would take his own life.

“Him seh to di age weh him reach now, if him duh anybody nutten, police nuh supposed to a haul an’ pull him, him a kill himself,” Green said.

Robinson, who said her mother and McLeish had been married for more than 20 years, said that she, too, had heard the comment from McLeish, who though not her biological father, she called ‘Daddy’.

Last night, Mrs McLeish remained in the Mandeville Hospital in critical condition, while the body of her husband was taken to the morgue for post-mortem.