HEART ACHE

When Alfred “Philmore” Allen discovered the nude body of his then 21-year-old girlfriend Lakita Duke over a year ago on Saturday, August 13, 2005, his world fell apart. But the pain was compounded by the stares of accusation from some people and it piled on more pain, breaking his heart.

Lakita Duke was raped and murdered and discarded in bushes at Diamond, close to her home, leaving a three-year-old boy without a mother and the 35-year-old Alfred wondering “why?”{{more}}

Alfred and Lakita had been together for five years and he admitted that he wasn’t always faithful to her and had not really given her the love and attention that she deserved. But he was beginning to get the picture and had planned to marry her last December but it was too late.

He had since thawed out and had been trying to move on with his life and is now in a new relationship, preparing to settle down when old wounds were re-opened this week with the arrest of a man for her murder. The man Ali Gibson, assisted police last year with the investigation but it was only this year that he was charged after being linked to the crime by DNA evidence.

The memories flooded back.

“My house that I built is all because of Lakita, I use to spend wild, and it was she who helped me get my life together,” he told SEARCHLIGHT, dreading to have to relive the memories all over but still wanting to get this chapter of his life closed for good.

The VINLEC employee said that if it wasn’t for the support of some friends and other people who were there for him he doesn’t know how he would have survived the trauma of Lakita’s death and the accusing stares of neighbours and acquaintances who felt he was the killer.

However, he has a new help-meet at his side with whom he is in love.

“I am working hard at my new life … I am planning to marry my girlfriend next August and go back to church and really give God my life,” explained Alfred.

Gibson, who was charged with Lakita’s murder, was remanded until November 21.