Portland businessman loses second wife to murder

SHERWOOD FOREST:

Portland businessman Everton McDonald has lost his second wife to murder in just over a decade when the partially burnt body of 31-year-old Tonia McDonald was discovered in a car at Sherwood Forest shortly before 9 p.m. on Monday.

The body was found with the throat slashed inside her vehicle, which was razed.

Tonia, of Dolphin Bay, was last seen alive round about midday Monday by close friends in Port Antonio.

“I heard the siren and saw the fire truck driving by at top speed,” said Maxine Smith, a bartender at Folly Road in Port Antonio.

She added: “It was raining heavily and I was wondering where the fire brigade was going in that kind of weather. It wasn’t until about midnight that I received a call from a friend that Tonia’s body was found burnt and with the throat cut. I cried myself to sleep, because she was such a quiet girl. It is so sad.”

It has been theorised that Mrs McDonald may have been abducted and taken to the isolated area, which is densely populated by trees and shrubbery.

Firefighters who responded to a call from residents carried out cooling-down operations on the vehicle.

Tonia’s murder comes 11 years after Everton McDonald’s first wife, Merlene ‘Petal’ McDonald, was shot and killed outside her gate at Boundbrook, near the entrance to Spring Bank Road on the night of May 4, 2009.

Petal was shot multiple times in the head after she exited her SUV to collect her grandson, who was sitting in the rear of the vehicle.