An Elderly Woman is Chopped to Death in Benque Viejo

Porfiria Morales

A history of bad blood between a pair of elderly neighbors has ended in murder. In Benque Viejo on Saturday morning, Porfiria Morales was walking over to her son’s house a short distance from where she resides when she was attacked by someone living nearby. She was chopped in the neck during an altercation, one of many they reportedly had over the years. The incident has stunned the community, as both the Morales and Gomez families are related. News Five’s Isani Cayetano reports.

Isani Cayetano, Reporting

A longstanding issue between two families in Benque Viejo resulted in a deadly chopping incident over the weekend.  The victim is a seventy-one-year-old woman.  Porfiria Morales was on her way to her son’s house on Church Street on Saturday morning.  The elderly woman was only three doors away when she was viciously attacked with a machete.  Esduit Morales was at home waiting on his mother.

Esduit Morales

Esduit Morales, Son of Deceased

“So when I got up from the sofa to look towards the window, I heard a scream and when I looked there, there was a lady leaning against the far end of the two-storey building that’s in front of the park, and she was looking downward.  I couldn’t recognize that she was my mother, probably because of the blood, and I thought [that] a lady was being attacked by dogs, so I immediately ran out to aid the lady. When I was in the middle of the street here, yet in front of my house, I noticed that it was my mother that a slash wound here and the blood was just spurting and I turned back and I ran into my house to get a towel.”

Miguel Angel Gomez

At that same time, Jorge Gomez was reclining in a hammock inside his house.  He was alerted by someone in his family that an altercation was happening nearby.  He did not believe that his brother was the machete-wielding attacker.

Jorge Gomez

Jorge Gomez, Brother of Murder Suspect

“When I gaan outside there, I saw a lot of people and one of the persons there told me that my brother has chopped the lady and I said it can’t happen because he was cutting the [hedges]… but somebody came and told me like how they were discussing by the street there, they were discussing, but he neva pay no mind. He noh pay no mind to the lady. So he come to this side of the fence, cutting down. He never reached to the corner and I think that the lady told him something and that’s why he get upset and he do what he did.”

Morales had been hacked in the neck.  Her son returned to the scene of the incident with a towel in an attempt to stem the bleeding.

Esduit Morales

“So I applied the towel here to try to stop the bleeding, but it was already too late because she had spilt a whole lot of blood.  So I noticed that her chest was moving slightly, slowly and her lip too, a little pulse here on her lip and that was it.  She didn’t say anything.”

Porfiria Morales was rushed to the hospital in San Ignacio, but there wasn’t much that the doctors could do to save her life. She expired while receiving emergency medical attention a short while later. But what precipitated the deadly attack?  It’s a question we asked both families today.

Jorge Gomez

“With this lady, a lot of times they would argue and it never happened like today.  The last time they went to court, like I told you, the lady said that how my brother showed her his parts and the magistrate never found him guilty of nothing because the magistrate told the lady that if she saw the man eena his yard, she could just turn around and go. But she made a big issue that how he broke her windows and the magistrate told her that the report she did was not that.”

According to Morales’ son, the history of enmity between his mother and Miguel Angel Gomez goes back to his childhood.

Esduit Morales

“When I was young, for example, I was sleeping here.  He passed [by] drunk and he broke the glasses and all the glasses were on top of me.  One time, he use to tell my mother and my grandmother, two of you should give me your…, the… is slang for vagina.  But then they left it like that because of Christianity, but one time this guy chopped another neighbor with a machete and they had to rush him to the Melchor hospital to save his life.”

Miguel Angel Gomez has had previous run-ins with the law for other machete attacks he was involved in. His brother says that he has not been mentally sound for quite some time. Police, on the other hand, have charged him with murder.

ASP Fitzroy Yearwood

ASP Fitzroy Yearwood, Communications Director, B.P.D.

“He was detained a few minutes later and has since been charged for murder.”

Isani Cayetano

“Do we know what provoked this deadly attack?”

Fitzroy Yearwood

“Well, we are following several stories, but for someone to be walking on the street that they live, going to a relative’s house, and just being attacked by a neighbor, we would want to answer all the questions, so yes, we have charged him for the crime committed but that doesn’t mean that we are not canvassing the area to see what we can get that would help us to find a motive for that murder.”

Isani Cayetano for News Five.