Rajkumar Harrilall left his family in Guyana one month ago seeking ‘betterment’ in Trinidad but returned to an empty house on Saturday afternoon and the news that his wife and children had been gunned down.
Harrilall’s wife, Mohandai and his two sons Seegopaul and Seegobind Harrilall were slaughtered by gunmen who invaded their home during the carnage on Saturday morning at Tract ‘A’ Lusignan, East Coast Demerara. Harrilall told Stabroek News yesterday that he had now been left like a stranger.
“It is like I am a stranger I have no one and my life is at a standstill,” a grief-stricken Harrilall told Stabroek News. Leaning against one of his gate posts, Harrilall said he had been married for eleven years to Mohandai and their union had produced two children.
He said he was finding it difficult to make ends meet in Guyana and as such he opted to go to Trinidad after being urged by a friend. “I went over about a month ago hoping to make things better for my kids and wife, but look what I come back to, this is brutal,” he said bowing his head.
The Harrilall family was one of three where there were triple murders.
When Stabroek News had visited the family’s modest two-bed room home on Saturday morning, Seegobind, wearing only his underwear lay dead with his back bracing the bedroom wall.
His mother, Mohandai was cut down just as she was about to crawl under her bed and her four-year-old son, Seegobind, grabbing her night gown, lay dead with his head buried in her back.
Rajkumar Harrilall said that he received a telephone call from Guyana early Saturday morning in Trinidad from a relative, urging him to travel home on the earliest flight.
He said at that time he had no indication as to what had happened, yet he hurried to an airline and arranged for an emergency flight.
Harrilall said he succeeded in securing a flight, and while at the airport getting ready to travel he received another call from someone who broke the news that his wife and children had been murdered.
“When I hear that I dropped and got blackout,” Harrilall noted. He said he was later revived by staff at the airport who asked him whether he was in a state to travel and he said yes.
Harilall said Saturday morning he did not eat any food and his stomach was empty as he travelled on the plane. He said he fainted many times throughout the journey. Once he got to Guyana, a relative picked him up at the airport and he was escorted to the Lyken Funeral Parlour where he identified the bodies of his family. “What I saw at the parlour is too brutal
