A tense family intervention meant to correct a teenager’s worsening behavior ended in tragedy Tuesday night, when 54-year-old Linus Delice was fatally stabbed in Riviere Mitan, Monchy.
Police have confirmed that Delice’s 17-year-old nephew is in custody, following what relatives describe as a devastating escalation of months of troubling conduct.
According to Delice’s brother, Aaron Delice, the confrontation began while he and Linus were discussing the youth’s attitude and recent disciplinary issues.
“My son heard us talking, so he listened to all what we said. So he told me he was going by his mother,” Aaron recalled. “Right away he told my brother, ‘When you’re ready, come and lick me down. When you’re ready.’ So my brother said, ‘But I am your uncle. I warning you all, treat your father better. He says he wants better for you all.’”
Aaron said the teen reacted with hostility. “He just tell my brother, ‘You, don’t tell me nothing.’” He added that Linus tried to reason with the boy. “My brother rush behind him and told him, ‘But I will talk to you for your own good.’”
The father said the teen’s behavior had deteriorated steadily since entering secondary school. “They suspend him at school,” Aaron said. “Recently there, I am missing a knife in my set of knives. I tell him, wait. I go in his clothes basket. I find it there. I put it back. In three days, I see the knife missing.”
A nephew of the deceased, Zackius St Marthe, said he rushed to the scene after the suspect contacted him. “He gave me a call and he told me he cuffed my uncle,” Zackius recounted. “He told me my uncle just fell and he’s not breathing, not nothing.”
Zackius said he met the teen on the road as he hurried home. “I pulled up in front of him. I enter the vehicle now. He told me his brother tried to give him attitude last night,” he said. “When I came here last night, my uncle was not breathing, nothing.”
He urged young people to understand the intentions behind parental guidance.
“When people talking to you, it’s not bad they want for you,” he said. “They just want you to know things not good out there. They believe things good out there. It’s when you start working and doing things you realize everything they tell you is true. It’s not bad our parents want for us. Our parents want good for us.”
Neighbour Kendal Tobierre expressed disbelief that a moment of correction turned deadly.
“If the uncle is talking to you for good, it’s not bad the man wants for you,” Tobierre said. “You’re not supposed to do that. The man could have handled that situation differently. The man was right there already and the man ran back there and stabbed the man and then ran. That is very nonsense.”
Police investigations are ongoing, and the teen remains in custody as the family grapples with the sudden, heartbreaking loss.