Growing up, Melissa Rankine-Seymour always saw her uncle, George Ian Duffell, as indestructible and a man who, despite being dealt a hard hand in life, could survive anything.
However, on the morning of 15 Oct., her vision of the man she knew as a fighter was shattered after the 51-year-old West Bay resident succumbed to injuries he sustained after being stabbed the night before.
“It was all just very shocking and it was a bit overwhelming because I knew that he had prior incidents before, but he was so tough and so resilient. He just bounced right back. So hearing that he was gone, that was tough and that was hard,” she said Tuesday, 1 Oct., during an interview with the Cayman Compass.
Rankine-Seymour said his absence feels surreal.
“Even till this day it still feels like I’m gonna see him walking along in West Bay selling coconuts or talking to his friends,” she sobbed.
Duffell was fatally stabbed during an altercation on Birch Tree Hill Road, in the vicinity of Captains Joe and Osbert Road.
Detective Constable Alan Sherwin, who is the RCIPS-appointed family liaison officer in the investigation, said the incident happened around 10:55pm and started on Swallow Road.
“Ian had been up to Swallow Road interacting with someone, probably his assailant, and we believe that he started getting attacked there. He ran back down onto Birch Tree Hill, started running left and he went into the garden of number 197, where he tragically was finally killed,” Sherwin said.
A 42-year-old man of West Bay was arrested on suspicion of murder in relation to the incident.
He has been bailed pending further investigations.
No ‘opportunity to say goodbye’
Rankine-Seymour said on the evening of 14 Oct., while driving home with her mother after a day of errands, they caught sight of her uncle.
She said it was like any normal Friday for them, but later into the night, that would change.
She got a call from her sister saying that Duffell was involved in an incident.
At the time, she said, the family did not know what had happened nor how serious it was.
However, the next day, which will remain etched in Rankine-Seymour’s memory, she started getting phone calls and messages of condolences over the passing of her uncle.
“A family member of mine called to wish me condolences and I was like ‘What do you mean?’ I didn’t have any confirmation. I didn’t have any update,” she said.
However, within moments of that call she said she saw DC Sherwin and other police officers and she knew instantly something was wrong.
“There wouldn’t have been any other reason for law enforcement to come to my home to inform me… if something [bad] had not occurred,” she said.
She said the whole ordeal has been difficult for the entire family, as it came out of nowhere.
“We’re grieving a lot right now, and especially knowing the way that he died. Nobody deserves to go out like that, and it hurts me to know that we didn’t have the opportunity to say goodbye. We didn’t have the opportunity to hold his hand to be there with him during his last moments, and the person or persons involved took that from us,” she said, crying.
Duffell, she said, had no children, but he loved her and her sister as his own.
“No one should have to go and identify a family member, not dying of natural causes, but dying in such a heinous way. It was not a heart attack. It wasn’t a stroke. It wasn’t an illness that we were preparing for. This was a brutal murder,” she said.
Family pleads for justice
Rankine-Seymour said it has been difficult for her family to make sense of her uncle’s death.
She said he was always someone who kept busy whether it was working in construction or selling coconuts.
He was a great person, she said, who was was funny, energetic and loved sports.
“He was a great uncle… I had a lot of great memories with him. He was also very charismatic. Everywhere he went, he made friends and people just automatically fell in love with him. He had that type of persona. He was fearless. Nothing scared him. No one intimidated him,” she said.
She said he did have his challenges over the years and it was hard to see him change from how she knew him while growing up to what he had become.
“But deep down I knew him to be a good person and to have a good soul. So that’s how I want to remember him,” she said.
She is asking the community for help to get justice for her uncle.
“My appeal to the public is for them to come forth with any information to the police that will aid them in their investigation, and will ultimately help our family to find closure and for the person or persons involved in this incident to be brought to justice,” she said.
Sherwin said police are looking for the driver of a blue motor vehicle who shouted to Duffell’s assailant in an attempt to stop the assault.
“We’re urging that person to come forward, that might have seen Ian fighting with someone around about that location opposite Captains Joe and Osbert Road to come forward. That’s imperative,” he said.
Rankine-Seymour urged the community to consider what would they want to happen had this been a member of their own family.
“A life is something that can’t be replaced. When you take someone else’s life, you impact so many more people down the line, and I would never want to see another family have to go through this type of ordeal just knowing and feeling what I feel,” she said.
Duffell’s funeral service will be held at Wesleyan Holiness Church starting at 10am on 5 Nov.
Anyone with information can call the RCIPS Serious Crime Review team confidential tip line at 649-2930.
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