GRIEF-stricken relatives are still trying to determine what led to the machete attack on a married couple in Buxton Town, St Catherine, on Thursday, which left the wife dead and the husband with life-threatening wounds.

The deceased has been identified as 63-year-old Murdeline Sullivan. Her husband who remains unidentified for his safety was treated at hospital and released.

Reports from the Linstead police indicate that the attacker, armed with a machete, invaded the couple’s house about 1:00 am and attacked them.

The police said Murdeline and her husband were sleeping when they heard a sound outside and her husband decided to make some checks.

“The husband was allegedly attacked and received injuries to his face. He raised an alarm and the perpetrator escaped. His wife was later found inside their home with chop wounds all over her body. Both were assisted to the hospital, where Murdeline was pronounced dead,” the police report stated.

Investigations into the attack are ongoing.

When the Jamaica Observer visited the couple’s home on Thursday, bloodstains on buckets and pans in the yard and on bedsheets inside the house pointed to a vicious attack.

Relatives, including the Sullivans’ granddaughter, were in tears and hugged each other for comfort. They, along with residents and police, had converged on the bloody crime scene.

Murdeline who is a mother of nine children, two of whom are deceased, was described by her children as a jovial woman.

Her children stressed that she was always busy doing domestic work and helping her husband burn charcoal for sale.

One of Sullivans’ daughters, who gave her name as Wendy, told the Observer that she believes the couple was robbed.

“Mi think is somebody did a try fi rob dem. Mi mother is a loving woman. Mi nuh know who woulda wah harm her. If you come to her house, she a offer you something to drink. That’s how she stay. She nuh trouble nobody. Mi nuh know her as nuh troublemaker or somebody weh miserable. If she sick mi woulda know but dis death yah too hot. Mi head a kill mi,” the distraught daughter lamented.

‘She was just a nice woman,” another daughter, Patricia Taylor, added.

Meanwhile Murdeline’s son-in-law, who opted not to be named, said he had been planning to take her grandchildren to visit her on Thursday, but he got a call about her death in the wee hours of the morning.

“I spoke to her on Tuesday, to tell her I was taking the kids to her, but I didn’t get the chance because my business didn’t have sufficient workers, so I couldn’t leave. I told her I would be coming today. She is a very jovial woman; this is just sad,” he said.

The nephew of the husband corroborated the story.

He also pointed out that he didn’t believe the killing had been motivated by a domestic dispute.

“The man nice and quiet, him nuh inna nuh violence thing. Knowing him, mi highly doubt that,” said the nephew, who also did not wish to be named.