. A shooting incident at the St. Martin’s Secondary School parking lot, last Thursday afternoon, has left quite a few students traumatized and one woman dead.
Police have since arrested and charged Mitchell Isreal for the malicious death of his wife Arianna Duharte-Isreal. Up to the time of her death she was a registered nurse assigned to the Milton Cato Memorial Hospital at Kingstown, where she died sometime after arrival.
Reports are that there is a litany of spouse abuse complaints (up to 28 some one source said) filed against the accused murderer over the course of their troubled marriage. Sources say that Duharte –Isreal, of Cuban descent, was being abused for some 15 years with a recent episode occurring days before she was fatally wounded.
They say, a dance which the deceased shared with a compatriot at a Cuban official’s residence was the cause of such physical conflict between the two that “she had to seek refuge elsewhere” last Saturday night. ANN was informed that on the morning of her murder, husband Mitchell Isreal was served with divorce papers.
This resulted in Isreal alighting from his vehicle at the school where his wife was waiting to pick up their child. Sources say a scuffle ensued and Duharte-Isreal, in self-defence, struck her husband about his head. This evidently enraged him as he un-holstered his gun and fired several close ranged shots at her.
According to one of several recordings floating around social media, homicidal threats were frequent if not normal.
“He’s always telling her if you try to leave me I am going to kill you and I’m going to kill the son,” one female, who claims to know the victim, is heard saying. According to her, Arianna Duharte-Isreal made no secret of the abuse meted out to her. The hold Mitchell Isreal had on his wife was that “he’d brought her to St. Vincent. She was not a Vincentian nurse, she came from Cuba. Yuh understand?” the female continued to expose.
A youngster who apparently helped to move the still living but severely wounded registered nurse, related again by voice recording, “Man cuz man all a’we been in classes nuh man, do so, arwe hear about five shots leggo anuh man. Do so[classmate] run out fuss, then after [another classmate] then I walk out. I see the woman deh pon de ground bawling fu go hospital dawg. Do so, one ah my pardna who live up in Green Hill nuh, he duh go Grammar School, de man been above the school by the church watching everything.
The man tell me [classmate’s father] hit the woman with sup’n in she head and she tek she poss an hit him back and do so the man pull out he shatty – ahh – he gun and gee she it. But he say that how he put the gun to she head and gee she two and it look like one miss or sup’n so. Daz wah the man tell me dawg. Man I feel it dawg, me ain’ go tell no lie.”
Other social media posts claim to originate from sources who were at the location he apparently drove to after he “cruised out the [school’s] gate” without stopping to look back at the damage he had inflicted. An apparent WhatsApp message seen by ANN was screenshot to read, “Boy he been by the shop above my steel after he shoot she. Say he empty he fxxking gun in she n if he had more bullets he wudda fire them. Say he can’t start over, she wa d house and everything he work for.”
A police source confirmed that Mitchell Isreal was arrested hours later and he is currently in custody assisting the Royal SVG Police Force with the continuing investigations. The son, traumatized no doubt, was not harmed by the shootings, the police source also confirmed.