A 25-year-old woman died after she was stabbed several times early yesterday morning when four men invaded her West Ruimveldt home. The murder has the appearance of a robbery that ended badly, but relatives are convinced that the men were sent to kill her.
Dead is Shenese Richardson-Austin called ‘Bucky’, a hairdresser of Lot 502 West Ruimveldt. Her husband who turned up at the Georgetown Hospital hours after the incident was arrested and is in police custody assisting with investigations.
Richardson-Austin was pronounced dead around 12.20 am in the operating room. She sustained several stab wounds to the hands but it was one to her neck that proved to be fatal. She was also beaten during the attack and this left her face badly swollen.
When the four bandits, three of whom were masked, forced their way into the house, Richardson-Austin, her mother Jean Ann Richardson and sister Rayana Haynes were at home.
The men escaped with gold jewellery, Richardson-Austin’s cellular phone and a substantial amount of cash.
Recounting the terrifying ordeal, Haynes told this newspaper that they would usually sell items at the home and around 11 pm she heard someone calling at the door. She said when she checked, there was a man who asked for $40 cigarettes adding that he was paying with $500.
Stabroek News was told that moments earlier the man had gone to a house at the back asking if that was the place that sold cigarettes.
According to Haynes, people would go to the home to buy things at all hours so the man asking for cigarettes at that hour was nothing strange to her.
She recalled that she handed the man Bristol cigarettes to the value of $40 and collected the money. However, when she turned to get change the man pushed open the door and signalled to three other men outside.
She said when she turned around she saw, four men all armed with “big guns”. She said the fake customer grabbed the gold chain she was wearing, after instructing her to remain quiet. Three masked men then entered and headed to a room at the back, after one of them grabbed a knife from a kitchen drawer. Richardson-Austin was sitting on a chair in that room eating KFC.
Haynes stressed that a total stranger would not know where they kept their knives and she insisted someone would have sent the men to the house and given them instructions as to what they had to do.
Haynes said she was forced into a room where her mother was sleeping and seconds later she heard her sister hollering for help. According to her, at this point, the gunmen were likely beating her sister and ransacking the room. She said that there was nothing she could have done because she was lying face down in the room with her mother, while a gunman stood guard over them.
When her sister started screaming, Haynes said, their mother jumped up out of her sleep and the gunman guarding them then relieved her of the gold rings she was wearing. The gunman also took $15,000 that was on top a vanity table, which represented sales for two days.
“He [the man guarding Haynes and her mother] tell them man ‘come along leh we go man, y’all don’t bother with that [ransacking the house]. We don do what we had to do, come along’,” Haynes said adding that the men spent at least 15 minutes in the house.
The woman told Stabroek News she was convinced that the motive was not robbery because no one else in the home besides her sister was harmed during the ordeal and her sister also did not put up any resistance that would have caused the men to kill her.
She said she was convinced that the men went to the home to kill her sister.
Relatives yesterday told Stabroek News that Richardson-Austin had suffered abuse and infidelity at the hands of her husband, with whom she had been involved for almost a decade. They were married for three years.
According to Haynes, Richardson-Austin’s husband had fathered a child outside of their marriage and this had upset her sister. She said that on countless occasions, the man had hit and threatened her sister. Four months ago, Haynes said, Richardson-Austin moved out of her matrimonial home in Ogle and returned to her mother’s residence from where she did hairdressing on a small scale. But she said her sister’s husband would follow her around. Haynes said her sister had made several reports to the police about her husband’s behaviour but nothing was done.
Haynes recalled that on Saturday last the two had an encounter, near La Repentir Cemetery in which he blocked the path of her car. When she finally got home, Haynes said, her sister told their mother that she was fed up of him.
Stabroek News was told that the man had attempted to drown his now dead wife in a tub at their home some time back and was once caught beating her on the Linden/Soesdyke highway. The man had also threatened to slit his wife’s neck, damage her face, puncture her fists and make her relatives holler, this newspaper was told by relatives gathered at the house yesterday.
Another sister Chrishanty was in tears when this newspaper visited the home.
“They murder me sister right hey fuh nothing at all… And when they don they wipe off them hand on a towel, they get from she drawer,” the woman said between sobs.
She told this newspaper that after stabbing the woman the gunmen tumbled drawers and found some cash.
Chrishanty said that when she saw her sister at the hospital, blood was gushing out of her neck and her face was swollen and black and blue.
She said that even before she was taken to the operating room, the medical staff at the hospital were already convinced that she could not make it.
Chrishanty said they were trying to call her sister’s cellular phone, but the person who has it is cutting it off all the time.
Richardson-Austin’s mother was in shock and during this newspaper’s visit was outside and unable to enter the house. The carpet in her dead daughter’s room was soaked with blood and there was more blood on a nearby fan. There was also some bloodstained cloth on the floor.
Jean Ann Richardson lamented that the police arrived hours after the incident had occurred. Stabroek News was told that a relative called the West Ruimveldt outpost but was told that there was no police officer available to go to the location.
According to the grieving mother, the police only arrived some three hours after her daughter had already died and dusted for fingerprints.
Persons who turned up at the home expressed their shock at the incident
Richardson-Austin was the fourth of five children.
