A 43-year-old female security guard attached to RK Security Service was tied, gagged, beaten and then strangled while on duty at Uncle Eddie’s Home early yesterday morning.
Dead is Simone Coleridge of Tiger Bay who had been assigned to the senior citizens’ home by her company less than a year ago. The woman reported for duty at the Tucville, Georgetown location on Tuesday night.
Perhaps Coleridge discovered the robbers, who murdered her, as she was patrolling the compound or she might have been alerted to the intrusion by a noise. She was found with her arms tied behind her back, her feet tightly strapped together, and her mouth stuffed with newspaper and bound.
Police in a press statement yesterday said they are investigating “the suspected murder” of Coleridge which occurred at approximately 2 am yesterday at Uncle Eddie’s Home, Tucville, Georgetown.
Investigations, police said, have revealed that “an aide on duty at the institution heard a noise in the building and upon checking found the body of Simone Coleridge lying on the floor in the waiting area of the building. Her hands and feet were bound and her mouth gagged with a piece of cloth.”
A subsequent check, according to police, revealed that a television set, a portable fridge and a microwave had been stolen. Police have since recovered the stolen articles in an abandoned house in the Tucville area. A post-mortem examination will be conducted shortly. No one had been arrested up to last evening.
A senior member of staff at Uncle Eddie’s Home, a private institution for senior citizens kept alive by a management committee, explained that the robbers broke and entered the main building from the back door located on the ground floor. The robbery, the staff member opined, was premeditated since the building’s phone lines were “cut”.
A mini-refrigerator and microwave oven are among the items stolen, the employee said. Minimum damage was done to the building’s interior and many of its residents slept unaware that their place of dwelling was under attack.
Yesterday labourers were clearing away weeds, which had grown more than one foot in height, from the home’s backyard when this newspaper visited shortly before 11am. The bushes covered the area in front of the breached back door, which showed signs of age, and extended to the rear fence. The compound’s front fence is equipped with two rows of barbed wire but its back fence has none.
“We are still traumatized,” the employee said. “Last night Ms. Coleridge and the nurse aide were on duty…Ms. Coleridge is the only security guard we had here.”
Yesterday’s attack, according to the employee is the “third or fourth time” that robbers have targeted Uncle Eddie’s Home. “We have been targeted before and the matters were reported to the police,” the senior staff member said. “They never bothered with it though. I suppose now that a woman has died because of the robbery they will pay attention to us….”
Contacted about this yesterday, Crime Chief Seelall Persaud was unable to comment. He said he would need to check to ascertain whether reports of previous incidents were made by Uncle Eddie’s Home.
‘A lone, unarmed,
female guard’
Shortly after 5 am yesterday Carlotta D’ Oliveira, awakened and answered her phone only to be informed of her sister’s death.
Word of Coleridge’s death spread quickly among relatives leaving grief in its wake. D’ Oliveira, an aunt and cousin made their way to the Lyken’s Funeral Parlour to identify the deceased.
“My cousin went in…I couldn’t go,” D’ Oliveira said. “She rushed out crying after she saw Simone. She [the cousin] said she couldn’t bear to look at her face because it was battered and her arms were tied behind her back and her mouth was still stuffed with newspaper and gagged…it was horrible.”
D’ Oliveira believes that her sister may have recognized her attackers. She recalled that earlier this year, Coleridge had related an incident to her. Her sister, D’ Oliveira said, had a confrontation with a man in the compound of Uncle Eddie’s Home.
“She told me that the man was in the compound that night armed with a pitch fork… they had a little pushing but she was the type of person who would avoid a fight,” D’ Oliveira related. Coleridge could identify the man, her sister said. The woman had also had a similar encounter at the end of last year. Both incidents, according to D’ Oliveira, were reported to RK Security but no action was ever taken by the company.
“How can you leave a lone, unarmed, female guard assigned to such a dangerous location?” D’ Oliveira questioned. “I believe that RK should have assigned an armed guard to assist her or they should have transferred her to another location altogether.”
D’ Oliveira said she visited the security service hoping to speak to owner Roshan Khan about the incident. He was unavailable at the time but D’ Oliveira said Khan had since indicated that he wants to speak to her about the matter.
The distressed woman said that Coleridge often complained about conditions at her worksite. Coleridge had once told her sister that her chair at Uncle Eddie’s was “infested with bugs” and she would often joke about the matter. D’ Oliveira stressed that working conditions and safety provisions for security guards need to be improved.
“I hope that my sister’s death will cause change for other women guards at RK,” D’ Oliveira stressed. “My sister wanted to work. She chose to work and refused to leave the job because she knew employment was hard to come by… RK will have to answer my questions and I am praying justice will be served for my sister.”
Coleridge was the youngest of her sisters, D’ Oliveira said, and the second sibling to die under such tragic circumstances. An older brother, Keith Coleridge, was shot to death on Wellington Street just over a decade ago.
Meanwhile, efforts made to contact Khan or RK Security officials for a comment were futile. Coleridge is the second RK guard to die while on duty this year. Julian Edmond Embrack, a Visiting Inspector, was discovered with a gunshot wound to his head on a road in the Diamond New Housing Scheme on April 24.
