WHAT REALLY HAPPENED?
The lives of Darien’s Scott Hapgood and Caribbean island worker Kenny Mitchel collided last year. It ended with Mitchel dead and Hapgood facing a manslaughter charge.
The lives of Darien’s Scott Hapgood and Caribbean island worker Kenny Mitchel collided last year. It ended with Mitchel dead and Hapgood facing a manslaughter charge. What really happened in that hotel room? For the first of a two-part series on Hapgood’s deadly encounter with Mitchel while on vacation with his family last April in Anguilla, see
“The kids are holding up pretty darn well, but there’s little things you notice,” Kallie says. At the moment, here in the park, they seem to be in a good mood.
“I promised them ice cream afterward,” Scott says.
Editor’s note: This is the first of a two-part series on Darien resident Scott Hapgood’s deadly encounter with hotel worker Kenny Mitchel while on vacation with his family last April in Anguilla.
DARIEN — The man stands in the park, reenacting a scene from his own life. He is in the park with his family, and they are pretending to be themselves, doing things they normally do: playing games, walking on the grass. But they are not themselves. And this is not normal. But his lawyer said it was a good idea, so here they are.
In the middle of a sea of green athletic fields, dense woods, playgrounds, tennis courts, and a pond, he stands in the shade of a gazebo behind a field where his children compete in sports—a field where, as a boy, he himself competed, a field he knows better than his own back yard. His two daughters fling a lacrosse ball back and forth, back and forth.
“Lacrosse is like a religion around here,” the man says. All three of his kids play in lacrosse leagues after school.
There’s a photographer taking pictures of them, and the family has an easy rapport as they stand before the camera. “Should we smile?” asks Kallie, the man’s wife—a good question, all things considered. The photographer is taking their picture because of what happened when they were on vacation in the Caribbean and the man, Gavin Scott Hapgood, was accused of causing another man to die. Now they want people to see that despite that awful nightmare they are a good family. This photo shoot is one small part of what they see as their fight for survival.
The man, who goes by Scott, met Kallie freshman year at Dartmouth. They have been married for 17 years. Scott, who just turned 45, has worked in the same industry, finance, for the same company, UBS, for more than two decades. Kallie, 44, is head of investor relations at the private equity firm Gridiron Capital. They chose this town, Darien, the ninthwealthiest town in the United States — the town where Scott grew up — to raise their three kids in, two girls, ages 13 and 11, and a boy, 9.
You can plan all you want. Scott’s life has moved along tracks grooved deep over decades: from the suburbs to the Ivys and back to the suburbs, a family and a job and a big house. But there are so many humans running around the planet, and sometimes two of them collide unexpectedly, at just the wrong angle in the wrong millisecond, and it causes an explosion. That’s what happened on vacation in Anguilla: Scott ended up in a hotel room 1,800 miles from the town where he grew up, and in that room was a stranger, a younger man named Kenny Mitchel, and pretty soon the other man was dead.
Scott Hapgood’s rectilinear face rests on a tree-trunk physique maintained by the doubles paddle tennis league he and Kallie compete in (and dominate). He was a first team All Ivy defensive end and a second team All Ivy lacrosse player. Today he’s a tanned, six-foot-three avatar of suburban masculinity, with a Mt. Rushmore brow, thin lips, and cropped sandy hair, in button-ups and khakis and breathable mesh loafers. His handshake is firm, even though the pinkie of his right hand juts out at a strange angle, the result of an old sports injury. Nothing else is out of place. In photos Scott appears every inch the Ivy League alpha male that his résumé suggests.
In person the stereotype falls away. Dark circles have appeared under his eyes. He speaks in clipped sentences, with visible tightness at the corners of his mouth. A week before the shoot, at a grim press conference, he called his life a “living nightmare.” Only around his family does the pre-Anguilla Scott emerge. As he stands within the force field of their affection, his warm smile melts away the tension curdling behind his jaw.
It’s been hard for the kids to process what they witnessed—to be witnesses, in fact, giving statements to the police in what would become the investigation of their father. They have been in therapy. Scott and Kallie have been open about what happened, and what’s happening now. “The kids are holding up pretty darn well, but there’s little things you notice,” Kallie says. At the moment, here in the park, they seem to be in a good mood.
“I promised them ice cream afterward,” says Scott, smiling.
Kenny Mitchell
Kenny Mitchel was born on the Caribbean island of Dominica, where he grew up with two brothers. His parents split when he was young. “He was their favorite,” says a close friend, who spoke on condition of anonymity to protect his job. “He was very much loved by his family.”
After his father moved to Anguilla to pursue business as a contractor, Kenny often traveled back and forth between the two islands. In 2015 he moved to Anguilla for good, to follow in his father’s footsteps.
He made friends almost immediately. He loved cooking, eating, dancing, and making music. Kenny could throw a barbecue with no warning, and fill up a yard with people at the drop of a hat, the friend says. “He would say, ‘I’m going to grill up some chicken, invite everybody to come. He loved to see people having a good time.’”
A year after he moved to Anguilla, Kenny met a woman named Emily Garlick at a food festival where she was working. He loved food, and Emily caught his eye; he hung around her booth all day, smiling at her. She flirted, told him to go away, thinking he was “too small, too little.” But her friend put Emily’s number in Kenny’s phone, “and that was it.”
Kenny was wiry, with dark skin and a gentle, handsome face. Garlick—white, British, red-haired, blue-eyed, her face an ocean of freckles—fell hard. “He was caring. He was passionate—about everything: his music, his food, me, his family, how he looked,” she says. “He loved to look sharp, funny, goofy. He loved to dance. He was a bit silly. A good one.”
She recalls one of their early dates, when they spent a weekend together on the beach, and he wrote her a song on the spot. She remembers it perfectly:
When you look into the sky,
Have no wings but wish I could fly Not gonna lie, I lost a few close friends And I’m not afraid to cry, Beautiful girl on the beach has got some beautiful eyes…
After two dates they were a couple. “Four months later,” she says, “we were pregnant.” They moved in together. Mylie—a combination of “Emily” and Kenny’s nickname, Mylez—was born in February 2017.
Kenny was obsessed with his newborn daughter, Garlick says. “He was great—he knew his responsibilities and he did them. I’ve got videos of him playing with her all the time… He did feed [her] through the night. He changed nappies.”
Supporting his family was important to Kenny, but it wasn’t always easy. His father made good money as a contractor, and Kenny had followed him into that line of work, taking on odd building jobs. Then, in September 2017, Hurricane Irma wiped out homes and caused millions of dollars in damage on Anguilla. Malliouhana, one of Anguilla’s preeminent luxury hotels, was hit badly. Kenny got a job there as a maintenance worker, repairing broken railings, repainting walls, and doing electrical work. He was earning around $2,000 a month and he loved the work, according to those who knew him, and he began to allow himself to dream of bigger things: college abroad, his own landscaping business.
Still, his relationship with Garlick was often tumultuous. They argued, broke up, and made up. Love for Mylie held them together, until it didn’t.
On March 25, 2019, less than three weeks before he died, Kenny was arrested and charged with raping Garlick.
At the time of his death he was out on bail, with a protective order keeping him from seeing Garlick or his daughter. Garlick now flatly denies that he raped her, and the facts of that incident remain murky. “He never laid a hand on me,” she told Town & Country, adding that Kenny was never once violent with her. “He didn’t know how to be violent,” she said. Still, she later confirmed that she had been the one who called the police that day, leading to his arrest. After several requests, she declined to elaborate further.
Whatever had happened, she said, was between her and Kenny. Plus, “It didn’t define him. He didn’t deserve to die.”
Family vacation
On the night of April 12, 2019, Kenny went out with his close friend, who recalls his being in good spirits, talking about the future. He mentioned that he had just gotten paid, and paid his bills, earlier that day.
“You said to me when you left my car the night before your passing ‘Aye frère, I love you, eh,’” the friend wrote online shortly after Kenny died (the two often spoke Dominican Creole with each other). “At least you passed knowing that I loved you and appreciated you the same.”
Anguilla has dozens of beaches, but Meads Bay Beach, a cartoonishly perfect milelong strip of pale sand on the western tip of the island, is where most visitors stay. They book rooms in one of its upscale hotels, the easternmost of which is Malliouhana, a cluster of bone-white buildings perched on a rocky bluff. It opened in 1985, and its spa and world class French-Caribbean restaurant helped spur an explosion in luxury tourism to the island. After closing in 2011 for a multimillion-dollar renovation, it was reopened four years ago by Auberge Resorts, an international hospitality management company that operates 19 properties on three continents. In high season a single room at Malliouhana can cost $1,000 a night; a suite runs upward of $1,800.
Scott and Kallie knew none of this when they booked their seven-night stay. Amid the constant logistical tangle of school, sports, and work, the Hapgoods had little time to debate vacation destinations. They went to a travel agent and picked Malliouhana at random from a menu of options, as if “throwing a dart at a dartboard,” Scott would say later.
In addition to nice hotels and pristine beaches, Anguilla, population 15,000, is known for its friendly locals. The crime rate is low compared with other Caribbean islands. People leave their homes unlocked. Tourism is the economy, and guests are greeted with smiles. Many are American, and, as is the case at most Caribbean resorts, nearly all are white.
The first thing that happens when you set foot in Malliouhana is someone hands you a rum punch. Breezes blow fragrant air through the open lobby, past seagreen columns, between potted palms, over mirrored floor tiles, past framed tropical scenes by the Haitian painter Jasmin Joseph. A smiling attendant leads you onto the veranda, where sunburned pink flesh sinks into pristine white couches. Beneath you the ocean stretches for miles.
The Hapgoods wasted no time enjoying Malliouhana on their first morning. They picked their way to the beach for an early swim, down a narrow staircase hewn from the cliff face with a plastic guardrail. Staffers in uniform handed out sunscreen and towels.
Kenny was supposed to start work at 8 that morning, but according to Scott’s lawyer, Juliya Arbisman, Kenny’s supervisor, Eduardo Urquiza, later told police that Kenny reported two hours late, around the time the Hapgoods were swimming.
After their swim, the family walked back up to the hotel for lunch; Kallie and the kids ordered virgin daiquiris. Most of the resort’s employees are native Anguillans or transplants from other Caribbean islands. They wear straw hats and striped T-shirts and toothpaste-green board shorts, filling drinks, folding towels. They smile knowingly at the roosters that peck food off plates, and they ask guests if they’d like a Carib beer, or perhaps they might want to try a lychee?
Several Malliouhana employees said they recalled seeing Kenny working by the pool on the first day of the Hapgoods’ visit, and when they greeted him he seemed normal. One employee remembered seeing the Hapgoods and Kenny in the pool area around the same time at midday—the Hapgoods were eating lunch; he was painting a wall. They were separated by perhaps 30 yards, and she didn’t see any interaction between them.
Kallie checked out snorkeling equipment after lunch, and the family swam amid schools of blue tang and parrotfish, five blond heads bobbing in the surf, the tangle of their overbooked suburban lives dissolving into the sea.
Afterward, Scott and the kids trudged back up to the pool, while Kallie went to return the snorkeling equipment. Sleepy from the afternoon sun, Scott decided to return to the room. The Hapgoods were in room 48–49, a pair of adjoining suites configured into a larger suite with two bedrooms connected to a central sitting area. The suite was in a one-story building at the edge of the property, about 100 yards from the pool.
Scott walked along a footpath, winding through a manicured grove of papaya and hibiscus. Black roosters strutted on the grass, and emerald lizards scurried into the underbrush.
According to Arbisman, Urquiza, Kenny’s direct supervisor, scheduled Kenny to fix fans in a restaurant kitchen in the afternoon. But for two hours he was unaccounted for, and he never completed the assignment.
Scott flopped down on the king-size bed, flicked on the TV, and found the Masters golf tournament. Not long afterward, his daughters returned.
A few minutes later, Scott heard a knock at the door.
‘Give me your money. Give me your wallet.’
This is what Scott says happened next: When he opened the door he saw a hotel employee—black, slight of build, and several inches shorter than himself. A man he would later learn was Kenny Mitchel. Kenny explained that he was there to fix a broken sink, Scott said. Scott hadn’t reported a broken sink, but the guy was wearing a uniform, and he let him in.
He led Kenny to the bathroom, then went to the room his daughters were in to let them know someone else was there. He heard a noise behind him. He turned around. There was Kenny, he says, who pulled out a knife and said, “Give me your money. Give me your wallet.”
Scott says he told Kenny to calm down, but Kenny held the knife up and repeated, “Give me your money. Give me your wallet.” Scott grabbed Kenny’s arm and wrist with both hands to get the knife from him. The men fought.
The brawl moved into the bathroom of room 49. Scott ended up on top of Kenny, straddling him on the cold tile of the bathroom floor, his arms pressing on the smaller man’s chest. His daughters ran for help, yelling that their father had been attacked.
Geshaune Clarke, 27, was working at the Malliouhana as a bellhop, his station a few yards from the front desk. This is what Clarke says happened next: He saw two children approach the desk and speak frantically to the attendant there. He couldn’t make out what they were saying, but his supervisor emerged and told him to go to room 48. He rushed there with Urquiza. Clarke found the door open; it had been propped ajar in a specific way that only employees use.
Nobody was in the room.
The door to the adjoining room was locked. Clarke says he heard several thumps from the other side of the door. He told Urquiza, who had a master keycard, to unlock room 49. Clarke says that a later review of records showed that this key swipe took place at 3:53 p.m., and that he was the first one in the room. He saw a trail of blood leading from the bathroom, a few feet from the entrance. He looked inside, and his eyes locked with Scott’s. Then he looked down and saw Kenny beneath Scott on the floor.
Kenny and Clarke were friends. They socialized and made music together, sometimes hanging out at Waves, a beach bar managed by Emily, Kenny’s girlfriend. Scott’s right arm was over Kenny’s chest, holding him down. His left forearm was pressed down over the right side of Kenny’s neck and collarbone, according to Clarke.
“He came at me with a knife,” Scott said. Urquiza immediately went over and pressed down on Kenny’s limp hand and foot. He wanted to demonstrate that he was there to help Scott restrain the man.
“He came at me with a knife,” Scott said again. Clarke didn’t see Kenny move at all. Scott continued talking, explaining that Kenny had asked him and his daughters for money. “You need to get that knife,” he told Clarke.
‘You need to get off of his airways’
Clarke walked past the bathroom and down the few steps into the bedroom, where he found the knife on the ground next to the TV. It was Kenny’s Leatherman utility knife, a tool he used regularly in his maintenance duties. The blade was half folded, in a V-shape; Leatherman blades lock into place when extended, meaning it was either intentionally partially folded or had been jarred by an impact. He doesn’t recall seeing blood on the blade.
Clarke placed the knife on a table and returned to the bathroom. He didn’t see Kenny moving, or even drawing breath. He asked Scott to get off the prostrate man. According to Clarke, Scott refused, replying that he had just been attacked. “I do understand,” Clarke recalls responding, “but you need to allow him some airway breathing space.”
When Clarke had first entered the room, he says, Scott seemed shellshocked, off-kilter, wired by adrenaline. But when they asked him to get off Kenny, he recalls, “everything changed.” Scott grew angry. He refused to budge and said that Kenny was breathing just fine.
“I can feel his stomach moving,” he said. “You could stay on him for restraint if you like,” Clarke shot back, “but you need to get off of his airways.” Scott barked at him, asking if he knew what it felt like for someone to attack him in his room on vacation and ask for money. “He was rambling a lot,” Clarke recalls. “He had the floor most of the time, you know?”
Scott set conditions, according to Clarke: He would get up if the police or security came, or if they could find something to tie Kenny up with. Scott later told
T&C, “I was repeatedly saying we need to get him into handcuffs because I was frightened he had more weapons on him.”
After they explained that they were hotel employees, and that Kenny worked under Urquiza, the manager, Scott told them that he couldn’t trust other workers in uniform who might have been affiliated with Kenny. Clarke and Urquiza kept trying to convince him to give Kenny more breathing room, but Scott resisted, reiterating that he wouldn’t do so until Kenny had been tied up or the police had arrived.
Clarke was fed up. He had had some medical training for a part-time job as a dental assistant. He knew basic emergency protocols and could see that Kenny was in distress. The man was struggling to breathe, his breath coming out raspy, fluid seemingly pooling in his esophagus. Clarke raised his voice for the first time, demanding that Scott get off Kenny. Scott shot back, asking Clarke to imagine himself in his position — how would his daughters feel if he got off Kenny? How could he understand?
Clarke responded that he did have a son, so he could understand. He still wanted Scott to get off Kenny.
“I don’t want to speak to you anymore,” Scott said. “You need to leave.” This upset Clarke; Urquiza gestured for him to calm down, and he did. Scott repeated that he wanted Clarke out of his face. So Clarke left the room and went to look for duct tape to restrain Kenny with. Clarke was so angry by this point that he considered grabbing a two-by-four to whack Scott so that he’d get off his friend. But he didn’t, and after a few fruitless minutes of searching he returned to the room.
“Who are you?” Scott asked, looking at Urquiza. “And who is he?” he asked, meaning Kenny. Urquiza explained that Kenny worked for him. “I really don’t trust you guys,” Scott repeated. By this point Clarke and Urquiza had been in the room for around 10 minutes.
Kenny shifted his head and rasped, “Can I speak?”
Scott looked down at him. “You don’t have a (expletive) thing to say,” he said, and pressed down hard with his forearm. Scott told T&C, “I could feel him breathing beneath me the entire time.”
That was the last time Clarke saw Kenny move.
Just then, Kallie burst through the door. When she saw the scene in the bathroom, she was shocked, and she asked Scott if he was hurt.
Scott said he was OK.
Kallie turned to Clarke and Urquiza, demanding to know where the police were. “If you guys don’t get the cops down here, this is going to be all over the United States news,” she said, holding her phone.
She asked Scott if she should record a video of the scene. “No need to,” Scott said.
Around this time, which Clarke places at somewhere between 4:15 and 4:25, two security guards entered the room. Urquiza asked one of them to help restrain Kenny, while the other went outside to speak with the police on the phone.
When Scott saw the towering security guard, he said, “You’re a big guy. You can hold him now.” He stood, left the bathroom, and went to the other bathroom, in 48, to wash the blood from his wounds.
Clarke entered the room where the security guard was kneeling next to Kenny. They rolled him onto his side, hoping to make it easier for him to breathe. Blood and saliva dribbled from his mouth. They could see he was breathing, but barely. Clarke felt for a pulse — it was faint, and slow.
The police arrived two to three minutes later. Kallie would tell the New York Post that an officer looked at her and said, of Kenny, “We know him. He is a bad guy. He was just in our custody”—an apparent reference to his arrest for raping Garlick.
Clarke helped EMTs load Kenny onto a stretcher. Clarke asked Kenny to give him his side of the story, but he got no response. Clarke didn’t see any breath fogging up the plastic mask over his friend’s mouth.
A few hours later, Kenny was declared dead.
Scott was treated for his injuries at the hospital — he later released photos of himself showing bloody lacerations on his nose, ear, and chest. He gave a statement to the police and spent the night at the police station.
Malliouhana got a room for the Hapgoods at the Four Seasons Hotel, on the far side of Meads Bay Beach. The next day, Scott recalls, Malliouhana’s general manager, Kapil Sharma, met the Hapgoods in person, apologized, and said he couldn’t “imagine what we were going through, especially because he also has children.”
The Hapgoods spent as much time together as possible over the next two days. On April 16 Scott was arrested. Kallie called Sharma, asking for help. “In a very brief phone call, he told her he could not help us,” Scott recalled. “We haven’t heard a word from anyone at the resort since.”
Scott was charged by a magistrate with manslaughter and sent to the prison, a mint-green building with high walls just across the street from the courthouse. He was escorted into the building in handcuffs, flanked by two large police officers. Within a few hours his lawyer got his case in front of a judge, who granted him $74,000 bail, citing “inflamed passions of the general public” and the “almost imminent likelihood of public unrest.” It was also confirmed at the bail hearing that several of Kenny’s relatives and citizens of Dominica worked at the prison, so it might not be safe for Scott to remain there.
As a condition of his bail, Scott promised to come back for future court dates, and he flew home to Connecticut with Kallie on April 18 on a private jet, “arranged for and paid for by the generosity of the people that touch our lives every day,” he said later. His children had flown home separately on April 17 with a family friend from Darien who had been vacationing on the island.
Furious Anguillans lined the streets near the airfield, snapping photos as Scott’s plane lifted off into the sky.
This story appeared in the March issue of Town & Country, a Hearst publication.