Victim?s family: Pomona murder was crime of passion

Tonight three young children are motherless after an apparent crime of passion in the Pomona Valley. News Five’s Jacqueline Woods has the disturbing details.

Coreth Bowden, Cousin of the Deceased
?I think he should mi think about the pickney them weh left behind if he really do that. Cause he use to tell her that if he can?t have her, no next man will. Then I use to tell ah, gyal that is serious.?

Jacqueline Woods, Reporting
According to police, thirty-one year old Marlon Hyde remains the prime suspect in the murder of twenty-six year old Lydia Smith. Early Tuesday morning Smith?s body was found on her bed, the apparent victim of strangulation.

Dangriga cops tell News Five Hyde is not cooperating with the investigation into the young woman?s death. Friends and family we spoke with today say the two had recently ended a turbulent six year relationship … A relationship that produced three children, aged two to five years old.

Following their break-up, Hyde often visited the Smith family?s restaurant and bar in Pomona village to visit his children.

Carla Tucker, Employee/Friend of the Deceased
?Monday when he come for dinner I borrowed his bike and I gone ker dinner home for my daughter. And he tell she like this, he say, ?I have your valentine gift for you, how you want it?? Lydia tell ah, ?I noh want no gift from you, tek your gift and give one ah your woman weh you di deal with out deh.? He said, ?Lydia you di ignore me.? He said, ?I wah kill you one of these days, you know.? But all of us never take it for granted, we mi feel like dah just joke he di run, because he tell she more than one time and she laugh it off.?

Dangriga police are trying to determine exactly what transpired inside Smith?s bedroom sometime between one and seven on Tuesday morning. The family say around one a.m. Smith left her bedroom and went upstairs to see her mother after a cousin arrived and asked for somewhere to stay. It is suspected that the killer had been waiting in the shadows and slipped into Smith?s room while she was gone and hid in this shower stall until she returned to bed. Six hours later family members found Smith?s body.

Coreth Bowden
?When I came over, I went to my cousin and I try wake up her because I noh believe that she dead. So I just went there and I di hold she up mek she get up and when I look on the pillow, lotta blood deh on the pillow and she done dead already.?

The body displayed several bruises around the neck, a cut on the nose, and scratches on the lips. Equally disturbing is the fact that Smith?s children were locked in this bedroom from the outside, leading the family to suspect the killer had locked the children inside before he murdered their mother. Jacqueline Woods for News Five.

Up to news time tonight, no charges had been filed against Marlon Hyde.