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| 52-yr-old Charged with Murdering Granddaughter |
| By Sheena Brooks |
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Melvina “Mary” Kelly |
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Grief and sorrow over the murder of an 8-year-old girl quickly turned to shock and disbelief when police arrested and charged the girl’s grandmother with the heinous crime.
Residents of Saddlers Village are still baffled about the Sunday morning incident that left Belisha Elliott Edwards of Conaree dead, allegedly at the hands of her paternal grandmother Melvina “Mary” Kelly.
According to police reports, the little girl died as a result of being stabbed in the neck.
“On Tuesday 13th July 2010, at about 7:45 a.m. an autopsy was conducted on the body of the late 8-year-old Belisha Edwards of Conaree Village by the resident pathologist Dr. Adrian Nunez, who concluded that her death was due to complications resulting from a penetrating wound produced by a sharp instrument to the right side of the neck,” said the report.
Although the girl’s grandmother was taken into custody at the scene on Sunday, the 52-year-old woman was not officially charged with murder until Tuesday.
Reports are that Kelly, Belisha’s paternal grandmother, had called the child’s mother, Asha Edwards and asked her if the girl could spend some time at her (Kelly) home.
No one has come forward with a plausible explanation as to what transpired in the house in the pre-dawn hours that could have led to the child being stabbed to death.
The Observer spoke with a resident of the village who said even though she knew “Mary” to be “a wicked woman”, she would never have thought she would harm her own grandchild.
“She was always a wicked woman. She stabbed up her husband some years back but not even me would have ever thought she could do something like this in a million years,” the woman said, speaking under the promise of anonymity.
“People saying all kinds of things but if anybody really know what happen they are not saying. At that time of night the child had to be sleeping, so that mean she didn’t stand a chance ‘cause it seem like she get stab in her sleep,” the woman offered.
The Observer was able to confirm through police sources that Kelly had stabbed her then-husband a few years ago, but that the matter was most likely not taken to court.
This media house was reliably informed that some attempts to conceal the involvement of the murder-accused in the crime were discovered at the scene. It was said that the sheets from the bed Belisha slept on had been partially burned.
The Sergeant heading the investigation spoke exclusively with The Observer, and confirmed that “something” had been burnt but it was not the bed sheets.
“When police arrived on the scene there was a small fire still burning at the side of the house. It appeared that one or more articles of clothing had been set on fire,” Sergeant Carey revealed. He also said the clothing Kelly was wearing at the time showed no obvious traces of blood.
When asked about the accused woman’s demeanor when police arrived on the scene, the police officer described Kelly’s deportment as “cool and calm”.
“The suspect was standing on her porch, leaned over a banister with her hand under her chin. She seemed cool and calm. We approached her and explained why we were there and she asked if we had a search warrant,” he said.
Sources close to the investigation have informed this media house that the girl’s body was found lying on her back with a small amount of blood on the sheet below the neck area. The rest of the room, the source said, showed no signs of a struggle.
Informed reports are that Kelly lived in the home with two sons, while two others and a daughter had erected small homes in the back yard. A police source told The Observer that the older son said he was not at home when the incident occurred, but the 17-year-old son said he had come home after midnight, went to his room and fallen asleep. Sometime after 2:00 a.m. he was awakened by a knocking on his bedroom door. When he opened the door, his mother (Kelly) poked him in the hip area with a knife and told him to “go back to sleep”, which he did. Screams from Belisha woke him a while later and he ran out of the house to alert his older siblings.
When they came back to the main house, however, the front door had already been locked. Police were called in sometime after 3:00 a.m.
Police officials would not say if the murder weapon was recovered at the scene, but alluded to a knife being used to stab the girl in the neck.
Belisha’s mother arrived on the scene later that morning, but police did not allow her to enter the house. Persons at the scene said they too began to cry after a wave of grief came over her and she “bawled and fell to the ground”. The police source said she claimed it was the child who had begged to go to Saddlers to spend the summer with her grandmother. Edwards reportedly screamed that she could not believe that “Mary” had killed her child.
Further investigation has revealed that Kelly is claiming there was someone else in the home but police have said that no one present in the residence said they had seen anyone else. Belisha’s father Leroy Elliott had reportedly visited Kelly while she was detained and appeared to be “sympathetic” towards her, repeating his mother’s claim of another person being in the house.
Kelly went before the court earlier this week to hear the charges and has been remanded to Her Majesty’s Prison to await trial. Under local law, persons charged with murder are not afforded bail. |
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