A seven-year-old girl and her six-year-old brother were yesterday forced to watch their mother being stabbed more than nine times about the body and up to press time the police were seeking the woman’s reputed husband in connection with the murder.
Forty-one-year-old Eileen Lall of 78 Herstelling New Scheme, East Bank Demerara was pronounced dead on arrival at the Georgetown Public Hospital and police were searching for her reputed husband, Chetram Singh, a fisherman.
A police source confirmed that ranks suspected that the man was hiding out in the Herstelling canefields.
When Stabroek News visited relatives of the woman last evening, her family and friends had already gathered at the house where the incident occurred at 474 Herstelling Back Street. They said the woman had fled there after suffering years of abuse at the hands of her reputed husband.
Relatives said yesterday marked exactly one week since Lall moved out of the family house at Herstelling New Scheme to stay with a family friend, 75 year old Aunt Ruby who lived alone. She was also in the house when the stabbing occurred.
A still shaken Aunt Ruby told this newspaper last evening that she, Lall and the two children were in the house a little after 4 pm yesterday. Lall had just finished bathing the children and they were heading towards the phone to make a call. She said just minutes later, they realized that the woman’s reputed husband [Chetram Singh] was standing at the front door.
Singh, she said, was asking Lall to return home and promised that he would behave himself but according to her, Lall told him that she could not return home because he had no money to maintain her.
“In no time me see dis man run in the house and she run in de bedroom wid de children and then he started pushing the door and then mi see he started like if he joking she but me didn’t take it for nothing,” the woman said.
She said at that time she thought that the two were just fighting because they did that often and so she contemplated parting them but decided against it.
However it was when the children started screaming, that Ruby said she looked back around and she saw Lall bleeding and the man ran past her, scaled the fence and headed up the road. “Is then I started hollering and them children start crying but when me come outside I saw no one and we started shouting for help,” the elderly woman recounted with tears in her eyes.
She said neighbours were alerted and then someone ran over to the police station and alerted them and they responded quickly.
“Every day since she come here he threaten she that he gon kill she, and it could have been me,” Ruby said as she broke into tears.
She said the woman was bleeding very much and when the police came they rushed her to the hospital where she was pronounced dead.
The woman’s daughter Reshanna said her mother and father had lived together for almost 28 years but said her mother suffered years of abuse.
Relatives said Lall’s death ends years of suffering and severe beatings at the hands of her reputed husband. The woman leaves five children, six siblings and other relatives to mourn her passing.
