…as homicides reach 94
Shot, hacked, beheaded, burnt, strangled. That’s been the fate of 20 women within the past seven months, according to recently-compiled murder statistics by Kaieteur News.
The figures also show that least 94 people have been murdered between January, 2015 and the first day of August, with six being slain last week.
Most of the slain women were victims of “crimes of passion.” But 77-year-old Carmen Ganesh, slain last Saturday, appears to be the victim of a brutal and puzzling home invasion.
She was clubbed with a large spanner, kicked, stomped and strangled by a young man, who had concealed himself in the woman’s Montrose, East Coast Demerara home.
Afterwards, the young killer casually left the scene with his victim’s pension and a few pieces of jewellery.
She is the third elderly woman, who lived alone, to be murdered this year.
The others are 67-year-old Ramdai Mohabir, called ‘Aunty Elsie’, who was raped and strangled on February 9 in her Lot 665 Topo, Albion, Corentyne, Berbice, and Suroogpattie Ramlakan, 73, called Auntie Carmen, of Richmond Village, Essequibo.
She was found lying on the floor of her two-bedroom home. Her night dress was pulled above her knees and her neck bore lacerations. A post mortem revealed that she was struck on the head and strangled. But the postmortem also showed that Ramlakan’s killer had inflicted injuries on the pensioner to apparently trick investigators into believing that she was raped.
Their killers remain at large.
A fiery domestic dispute was behind the murder last Tuesday, of Ormowatie Chammawattie, 74, and her 54-year-old daughter, Caustury Chammawattie-Persaud.
They were burnt to death in their Huis’t Diren, Essequibo Coast home after a man, identified as Sarwan Darshan, threw a lighted stove at them.
Darshan, the elder woman’s son-in-law, has been charged with murder.
On June 3, the badly chopped corpse of Parbatie Vijrauren, 37, along with the body of her lover, Ramdat Persaud, 56, was found Tain Village, Corentyne. Police subsequently arrested and charged Vijrauren’s husband, 26-year-old Ian Boodhoo, with the double murder.
Also the victim of an angry man was Miranda Shako, who was chopped with an axe during an argument with her common-law husband at Yarrowkabra, off the Soesdyke/Linden highway.
Then there was shopkeeper Janice Paul. On a rainy night in mid July, Mrs. Paul and her husband, Eusi Paul, were heading to their D Field, Turkeyen home when a cutlass-wielding man, identified as Jerry Dalrymple, chopped Mrs. Paul to death and wounded her husband.
Police appear to still baffled by the ‘seawall murders’ of two women, which occurred earlier this year.
In early June, the nude body of 14-year-old Campbellville Secondary School student Alicia Ali was found on the seawall at Turkeyen, East Coast Demerara. She was reportedly last seen alive by her mother, Maylene Williams, when she left her home to go to a nearby shop.
Police had initially suspected that Alicia had taken her own life, after finding what appeared to be a suicide note in her bedroom.
But a pathologist who conducted a postmortem on the teen’s remains yesterday gave the cause of death as asphyxia due to drowning, compounded by compression injury to the neck and blunt trauma to the head. The pathologist found no evidence of sexual assault.
Then on April 11, the decomposing body of Devkumarie Ramadhar, 17, of Bella Dam, Pouderoyen, West Bank Demerara, was found on the foreshore at La Jalousie, West Coast Demerara. She had been reported missing on April 04, 2015.
Last week’s six murder victims include miner Morvin James, 40, who was stabbed to death on July 27 at Baramita, North West District, during an argument with another man; Rasharda Dusrah, 29, who was found in an abandoned mining pit at Oku Backdam, Puruni last Tuesday, with a gaping wound to his neck. There was also Pooran Saroop, 57, found dead under a house at Berbice with a chop wound to the head, and seaman Davonan Sookram, 37, was body was found with two gunshot wounds to his head on Friday, at Ruby, East Bank Essequibo.
