Witness says he couldn’t burn ‘beautiful’ Tonia with acid

Four months before Tonia McDonald was murdered, her husband, Everton ‘Beachy Stout’ McDonald, reportedly pointed her out while she was having her hair done and told a man, who he had hired, that he could douse her with a corrosive substance.

“Him say, ‘If unuh want, unuh can do it right now deh so. Unuh can bun har up right deh suh,” the fourth witness, an incarcerated convict who is serving time for misprision of felony and receiving stolen property, yesterday recalled being told by McDonald.

The 68-year-old businessman, who is on trial in the Home Circuit Court for the July 2020 murder of his wife, was reportedly so anxious that he went for the substance himself.

But the man who he had hired to do the job claimed that he changed his mind and could not harm Tonia as she was too beautiful.

“Mi neva wah do it. I am not that type of person, and she was so beautiful, I couldn’t hurt her,” he testified as McDonald stared blankly.

The man’s response prompted Justice Chester Stamp to ask, “So you would have done it if she wasn’t beautiful?”

But the witness did not reply.

According to him, he met McDonald in 2019 and entered into an arrangement with him to assault his wife with “black acid”.

He said they met twice in 2019 and again in January 2020.

Giving him “bare problems”

However, he told the court that during the first meeting, McDonald complained that his wife was giving him “bare problems” and that she was giving him “pure bun”.

The businessman reportedly told the witness that he wanted him to get some black acid to disfigure his wife’s face.

The witness said he was first introduced to McDonald in a car park near to his supermarket in Portland. He testified that he was given $50,000 after he asked for gas money to return to Linstead, St Catherine.

On the second visit, the witness said McDonald showed him an exit route behind the supermarket, where he could escape after completing the mission.

During that same trip, McDonald also reportedly showed him Tonia.

The witness said McDonald instructed him to follow him into the supermarket but told him to walk a few steps behind him as the place was filled with surveillance cameras.

The witness said the businessman took him to a cashier, who he recalled was a very beautiful lady.

“I walked over to her and say ‘You are a so beautiful’, and she smile,” he said.

The court heard that the witness then left the supermarket for the parking lot, where McDonald gave him $60,000 to purchase the acid.

He said that a few days after he returned to St Catherine, he went to the salt factory in Spanish Town, St Catherine, where one of his friends worked, and told him that he wanted to purchase some black acid.

He testified that he returned to Portland in January 2020, where he met McDonald in the parking lot and gave him the bottle with the substance.

He said Beachy opened the bottle, tipped some on his hand, grimaced and then smiled and said, “Right stuff”.

The witness said after McDonald secured the substance, he invited him to walk with him and took him to a plaza close by, where Tonia was sitting under a hair dryer.

While walking away, McDonald reportedly told him that he could douse Tonia right there and then.

But the witness said he sent the businessman for the acid and when he returned, he sneakily slipped away and left.

According to the witness, he later contacted a policeman, who had arrested him in St Mary in relation to the theft of a cow, and informed him about the aborted mission.

He said that he also took the lawman to the supermarket and showed him the “beautiful lady”.

According to the witness, when he left Portland, he never tried to contact the police or McDonald again.

The first witness in the trial, an ex-employee, also testified that Beachy told him that he was going to use acid to burn his wife and a policeman with whom he was convinced she was having an affair.

That witness said he went to purchase the substance.

Tonia’s partially burnt body was found beside her car along a deserted road in Sherwood Forest in Portland with her throat slashed and multiple stab wounds on July 20, 2020.

A contract killer gave evidence that McDonald hired him to kill Tonia but that he subcontracted Oscar Barnes, who is also on trial, to carry out the act.

The trial will continue today.

tanesha.mundle@gleanerjm.com