BAMBOO, St Ann — The bleak weather added to the thick cloud of grief that hung over the community of Bamboo, St Ann, on Thursday as residents struggled to understand why an elderly woman many saw as a community matriarch was tied up and her house set ablaze.

Eighty-year-old Sylvia “Miss Puncy” Barrett, a farmer and vendor from Spring Garden, was found dead at her home Wednesday evening.

According to the police, one of her relatives saw fire coming from a section of the dwelling and raised an alarm. The fire brigade was alerted.

Police said Barrett’s relatives and neighbours worked to extinguish the blaze before firefighters arrived to perform cooling down operations.

Barrett’s partially nude body was found in the rubble. Her hands and feet were bound and appeared to have small burn marks.

Her neighbours are outraged.

“This is slackness! This worse than slackness, as a matter of fact. How you a go murder a 80-year-old woman? What can she do to hurt you? This is horrible and disgraceful! How you can treat a human being like that?” said a woman, who identified herself as Evelyn, seething.

Barrett would have celebrated her 81st birthday in July.

“Our elders don’t get celebrated enough for how they build our community, and I was thinking we need to start, and the first person come to mind was Miss Puncy,” said one man who asked not to be identified by name. “She a nice, nice lady, mi a tell you. To hear this news, it really awful; it shows say we haffi celebrate people while them deh here.”

Kennedy, another resident, is hoping the police investigation that is now underway will lead to swift apprehension of the killer.

“Mi a beg the police to find anybody who do this and bring dem to justice. Dem can’t get away with this, trust me. This is unheard of! This cannot and must not go unpunished. Mi a beg the new commissioner, ‘Sir, please put this one on the radar, send all you troops for this one. Sir, mi a beg you, the whole Bamboo begging you,” he pleaded.