-hospitalised at Fort Wellington
A Number 22 Bel Air mother and two of her four children were doused with a flammable liquid and set alight around 1 am yesterday.
They are being treated at the Fort Wellington Hospital.
Ann Simon, 32, sustained burns to her chest while her children, Prince Todd, 5, and three-year-old Osafo Aaron were burnt on their feet while sleeping. Police are still hunting for the woman’s former reputed husband.
In a press release, police said that the suspect reportedly broke into the woman’s house and doused her and the children with a flammable liquid and set them on fire.
From her hospital bed early yesterday morning, Simon told Stabroek News that she was asleep when she was startled by the sound of someone walking in her kitchen. She said she got up and asked, “Is who there?” but got no response.
As she was about to go and check, she said the man sprayed her with what appeared to be gasoline in a bottle and struck a match. He also dropped the bottle and the contents caught a sponge on the floor where she had been sleeping with Prince and Osafo and her one-year-old son.
She said while the flames missed the one-year-old completely, the boys’ feet started to burn. The woman said her 10-year-old son, Ezekiel, who had been sleeping on a sofa grabbed the bottle and hurled it out of the window.
She said the screaming children “run to me and me brush the fire off them.” When she attempted to leave the bedroom to seek help she realized that the man had locked the door from outside. She however, managed to “rock it and pull it hard and open it.”
Clutching the children she ran up the dam to her sister’s house and together they came out on the public road. They then joined a car which took them to the Fort Wellington Police Station to report the incident and then to the hospital.
The woman said she was involved with her reputed husband for the past eight years but was separated from him two weeks ago after constant quarrels over money.
She said she gets public assistance for the children but was also “cleaning walls for people for the holidays to get extra money.”
