BRINKLEY, St Elizabeth — Neville Sinclair struggled to contain his grief and anger as he told friends, neighbours, relatives and the Jamaica Observer team about the loss of his daughter.

“Mi neva a look fi dis,” he said, gesticulating helplessly in front of his house in Brinkley, a remote farming district, close to Nain in south-east St Elizabeth, yesterday.

His daughter, 26-year-old Nevia Sinclair, a secretary employed to the National Works Agency (NWA) in Mandeville, was stabbed to death in her bedroom as the family slept about 10:50 pm Sunday.

Police say it’s the first murder in St Elizabeth for 2020.

The alleged killer — a man with whom Nevia has lived on and off for several years — was in custody yesterday after being taken to the Santa Cruz Police Station by his father.

Sinclair said he saw the man fleeing the scene immediately after he found his daughter bleeding to death on the floor of her room.

“The bwoy run lef’ im boot (which was taken by police from under the dead woman’s bedroom window). After him pull off the mesh (mosquito netting) on the window, him go through the house, go inna di kitchen, tek di kitchen knife, fi mi kitchen knife him tek an’ stab up Nevia,” he said.

Sinclair said his daughter had cut his toe nails earlier in the day (Sunday) and the family had spent a relaxed afternoon into evening with no sign of the tragedy to come.

Yet, he remembered seeing the ex-boyfriend’s car close to dusk on Sunday, when he drove to nearby Morningside to visit a sick relative.

On his return, he and his family watched television until long after the evening news. He subsequently retired to bed and fell asleep while listening to the radio.

He leapt from sleep when he heard his wife cry out “A wha happen?!” Both parents ran from their room to find their daughter bleeding on the floor.

He heard his wife cry out “Jermaine, yu kill Nevia!”

He realised someone had gone through the back door and he went to the front of his house just in time to see a man going through the gate.

The man, whom he believed to be his daughter’s ex-boyfriend, ran to his car and drove away “dropping into a pothole” on the rough, narrow road.

Sinclair showed where the intruder had pushed aside the mosquito netting and climbed through the unlocked window to enter his daughter’s bedroom.

He told how his daughter was a “sound sleeper” and would not have awakened until she was attacked.

Sinclair said half an hour after his daughter died, the alleged killer called him to ask: “Mr Sinclair, wha happen to Nevia? Mi seh ‘den yu nuh kill her!’ An him don’t say anything more.”

Sinclair said he took his wife to the doctor early yesterday and both were said to be in relatively good health. When the Observer visited in late morning, the grief-stricken mother was said to be in no position to talk.

According to Sinclair, his daughter had come home to stay with her parents two weekends ago, saying only that she “can’t tek it anymore”.

Down the years, he said, his daughter had left her boyfriend at Hatfield in Manchester and returned home several times, only to go back.

So much so that his wife had once quipped “Nevia, it look like Jermaine tie yu up there.”

Yet, with all the problems he had considered the alleged killer a “decent person”.

Sinclair recalled how the man, an electrician, had rewired his house at Brinkley and refused to accept payment.

“But now him kill mi daughter,” he said.