Woman retraces actions before businessman’s killing to cops

RAD­HI­CA DE SIL­VA

Se­nior Mul­ti­me­dia Re­porter

rad­hi­[email protected]

The woman ar­rest­ed for the fa­tal shoot­ing of Steve Ghany Jnr may spend the week­end in prison un­less the Di­rec­tor of Pub­lic Pros­e­cu­tion, Roger Gas­pard, in­structs that she be re­leased based on her claim of self-de­fence.

She was tak­en back to the Vista­bel­la home yes­ter­day, where she re­traced her move­ments for po­lice hours af­ter giv­ing a record­ed state­ment.

Ac­com­pa­nied by her at­tor­neys and se­nior in­ves­ti­ga­tors, the 45-year-old moth­er of two re­vis­it­ed key ar­eas of the house where the dead­ly con­fronta­tion un­fold­ed.

Sources said the ex­er­cise formed part of on­go­ing ef­forts to piece to­geth­er the cir­cum­stances lead­ing up to the shoot­ing.

Po­lice con­firmed that pre­lim­i­nary find­ings have al­ready been for­ward­ed to the Of­fice of the Di­rec­tor of Pub­lic Pros­e­cu­tions, as in­ves­ti­ga­tors con­tin­ue to build a case that sources de­scribe as in­volv­ing al­le­ga­tions of in­fi­deli­ty and a his­to­ry of abuse.

The sus­pect re­mained in po­lice cus­tody for a sec­ond night as of­fi­cers in­ter­viewed mul­ti­ple rel­a­tives.

Sev­er­al of those ques­tioned al­leged that Ghany had been abu­sive and en­gaged in ex­tra-mar­i­tal re­la­tion­ships.

One rel­a­tive told Guardian Me­dia that Ghany had brought a mi­grant woman to live at the Alexan­der Road, Vista­bel­la home —a move that re­port­ed­ly caused ten­sion with­in the house­hold.

She had been liv­ing at the house for more than a year and had worked in a pros­ti­tute den be­fore Ghany paid to bring her home.

The source fur­ther claimed that while Ghany main­tained a re­spectable pub­lic im­age among in­flu­en­tial cir­cles, his pri­vate life was marked by trou­bling be­hav­iour.

“He por­trayed one thing out­side, but in­side it was dif­fer­ent,” the rel­a­tive said, adding that a pro­tec­tion or­der had pre­vi­ous­ly been grant­ed to a fam­i­ly mem­ber.

The same source al­leged that pri­or to his mar­riage, Ghany had phys­i­cal­ly as­sault­ed a for­mer girl­friend at Gulf City, an in­ci­dent that re­port­ed­ly end­ed the re­la­tion­ship af­ter she sus­tained a bro­ken foot.

Po­lice have not in­de­pen­dent­ly con­firmed those al­le­ga­tions but said all state­ments are be­ing as­sessed as part of the in­ves­ti­ga­tion.

An au­top­sy con­firmed that Ghany, 37, died from mul­ti­ple gun­shot wounds.

Ac­cord­ing to po­lice re­ports, of­fi­cers on mo­bile pa­trol in the South­ern Di­vi­sion re­spond­ed to a shoot­ing-in-progress call from the E999 Com­mand Cen­tre short­ly af­ter 9 am on Wednes­day.

When they ar­rived at the two-storey house, they were met by the sus­pect, who re­port­ed that she had shot her hus­band in self-de­fence.

In­ves­ti­ga­tors were told the in­ci­dent stemmed from an ar­gu­ment around 2.30 am over al­leged in­fi­deli­ty, which es­ca­lat­ed in­to what the woman de­scribed as hours of phys­i­cal and emo­tion­al abuse.

Po­lice said that by about 8.30 am, the con­fronta­tion had moved to the cou­ple’s bed­room. The woman al­leged that Ghany re­trieved one of his li­censed firearms and fired at her, but missed.

Fear­ing for her life, she re­port­ed­ly grabbed an­oth­er of his legal­ly owned weapons and dis­charged mul­ti­ple shots, strik­ing him sev­er­al times.

Of­fi­cers lat­er found Ghany ly­ing on the bed­room floor in a pool of blood, dressed on­ly in box­er shorts, with mul­ti­ple gun­shot wounds. A Dis­trict Med­ical Of­fi­cer pro­nounced him dead at the scene.

In­ves­ti­ga­tions are con­tin­u­ing.