“I did not kill my wife!”That is the message Barrouallie resident Paul Stephens would like sent to persons who yesterday spread or heard the rumour that Stephens had murdered his wife Jetonnia Stephens at their home in the Central Leeward community.

“What they want to think, they think, because I don’t understand where that came from,” said Stephens whose wife died on Thursday at around 6 a.m.He told SEARCHLIGHT his wife seemed to have passed away quietly and he has no idea what caused her death.

“She began acting a kind of way, some sort of attack, and she just end up dead.

To be honest, to tell you exactly what happen I don’t know,” said Stephens who is awaiting an autopsy to get closure.

The businessman said he and his wife have been together a year now and it is shocking what happened.“…But at the end of the day, I can’t take it on too much because I have a four-month-old baby girl that I have to take care of now,” said Stephens who revealed that he called the police around 6 a.m.

and they arrived around minutes to 8 a.m. and took away his wife’s body.“I wasn’t really scared because I didn’t want to think she was dead. I think maybe she went into a coma.

I didn’t want to believe she was dead,” Stephens stressed while adding, “If me cut she throat they would see where I am today, in jail.”The former Chateaubelair resident, who moved to Barrouallie about 10 years ago, said his wife was his all and he misses her already.

“We live like brother and sister, we didn’t even look like we in a relationship. That is a woman I cherish. Of all the relationships I was in that was the best I ever had,” said the 42-year-old man, who disclosed that his wife was 32.

“I have to stand up now for me and my little daughter. I feel sad about it but, what can I do?”Stephens said at the time of her death, his wife was writing a book about her Christian journey. He noted that they are ardent members of the Layou Miracle Church.“Through experience, I have to control myself. I experience death with my mother and father, but this is heart breaking. It is not a piece of cake like how it look.

That was a woman I enjoy being with day and night. That was like the pride of my heart. I enjoyed my wife’s time with me,” Stephens said while trying to contain himself.  Police are investigating and are awaiting the results of an autopsy.

Jetonnia and Paul Stephens in happier times.