WAKEFIELD, Trelawny – Residents of the usually quiet Morefield District in Trelawny were left stunned on Saturday after the body of 59-year-old David Brown was discovered in bushes metres away from the house he shared with his wife.

The man was reportedly found wrapped in a white bed sheet with chop wounds across his body.

Brown’s wife, who police say is important in assisting them to piece together their investigation, has not been located. According to Deputy Superintendent of Police (DSP) Winston Milton, the commanding officer for Trelawny, the now-deceased man and his wife were engaged in a domestic dispute on Friday night.

DSP Milton told the Jamaica Observer that threats were allegedly made during the dispute and the woman reported the incident to the police. In their bid to squash the dispute, cops visited the couple’s home.

“Mr Brown and his wife had a dispute last night after which Mrs Brown reported a threat made against her at the Wakefield Police Station. The police responded by warning the now deceased man to not carry out those threats,” DSP Milton explained.

However, the police were again contacted by residents who reportedly heard a commotion coming from the couple’s house on Saturday morning.

“Sometime after 7:00 this morning, residents of the Morefield community heard screaming coming from the Brown residence and they alerted the police. On arrival, the bloody body of Mr Brown was found and his wife was nowhere around the home,” DSP Milton told the Sunday Observer.

When our news team visited Morefield on Saturday, we observed a handful of residents standing at a community shop near the couple’s house. One man, who spoke to the Sunday Observer on the condition of anonymity, reported that arguments could always be heard coming from the middle-aged couple’s home.

Stating that he has lived in the area for “a lot of years”, the man said that a police vehicle visited the couple’s home twice on Friday night.

“Him and the woman mi hear say inna dispute how long. Police come up here last night fi come solve dem matter, but I don’t know what happened after that. It shouldn’t have reached this far, though,” said the resident.

A bloody area littered with rocks just outside of the gate leading to the couple’s board house told very little of what occurred at the Brown residence. However, as an elderly man led the way to the bushy area where Brown was found, he pointed to a bloody sheet of zinc, a few metres away from the house, that was suspected to have been used to transport the man’s body.

The elderly man explained that another resident of the community woke him up to share the news of Brown’s death. Pointing out that Morefield is usually a quiet community, he told the Sunday Observer that he is still shocked by the news.

“I just come look and when I come I see police taking him up. I was asleep and I heard them a knock down the house. When I jump up now, I hear say them kill the man. It look like them carry him on the zinc come down here,” he said. “But it look like them couldn’t manage the zinc because the grass soft, so them couldn’t go any further.”

According to the residents the couple had frequent domestic disputes.

“A him married wife…I out there and hear him tell him wife some nasty things. These things don’t happen in our community. I don’t want to see these things happening in the lane at all,” another resident bemoaned.

A woman, who said that she has lived in the community for 71 years, told the Sunday Observer that she has never seen anything like this before in Morefield.

“I feel bad about it, but a so it go,” she said.

“A long time the man a beat the woman and mi hear say she report it a station over and over, so a so it go,” another woman chimed in.

As investigation into the matter continues, DSP Milton is encouraging Brown’s wife to contact the Falmouth police.

“We believe that she can assist us in our investigation. Consequently, we are asking her to contact the Falmouth CIB,” said the commanding officer.