A 23-year-old woman was found lying on her bedroom floor with 11 stab wounds early Saturday morning and police have since held her reputed husband along with a man suspected of being hired to kill her and a third man who transported the suspected killer.
The husband was said to have been abusive during the three-year relationship with the woman.
Dead is Bibi Raffina Saymar of Hague, West Coast Demerara. According to a police release, the murder occurred around 2 am yesterday.
Neighbours had reported hearing screams coming from the woman’s home, after which a man was seen leaving the apartment. They informed the police who responded promptly and Saymar was taken to the Leonora Cottage Hospital where she was pronounced dead on arrival, the release added.
A subsequent investigation led to the arrest of her reputed husband, who police say is assisting with the investigations. The man, a 52-year-old Canada-based Guyanese, is said to be a real estate agent in Canada.
A police statement last night said that diligent investigations had uncovered evidence that Saymar’s suspected murderer had been hired by her reputed husband to kill her. In addition, the police said, a third man who was believed to have transported the suspected killer in relation to the commission of the crime had also been arrested by the police.
Saymar’s mother yesterday told a story of a relationship plagued with violence and her daughter’s fear of leaving the relationship because of threats from her husband.
Sunita Saymar was inconsolable at her Tuschen home when this newspaper visited. The woman said her daughter was introduced to her husband by a cousin of the man.
The couple had lived together for two years after striking up a relationship, in a home the man had built before they got married according to Hindu rites in Trinidad. Last Thursday marked the first anniversary of the marriage, the mother said.
They had first lived near her, Saymar’s mother said, then moved to Greenwich Park, after the man said he bought a house there. After living there for a while, the mother said, they then moved to Hague.
All the while, Saymar was being abused by her spouse. “Since from the beginning he used to beat she, but I never use to know,” the mother said before breaking down in tears.
Saymar’s mother said that while she suspected abuse, her daughter would only tell her that her husband was threatening her. She said her daughter told her that she could not leave the relationship because she was “frighten.”
Sitting in a hammock in her modest home, Sunita Saymar cried as she recalled the many times her daughter explained away bruises on her skin and why she would not leave her husband, “He tell she he gon blow she head off,” the woman sobbed as she recalled what her daughter had once told her.
“She would lie about [the bruises] and then she gon break down and tell me is he do it to she.”
She said when her daughter tried to leave the relationship, “he threaten that wherever or whoever she go with he gon mek she life miserable.”
Saymar made yet another attempt to leave the abusive relationship a few days before her murder. According to her mother, “there was a commotion Tuesday and like she tell he fuh leave she alone and then he call me and ask me if I can say something to she.”
Bibi Raffina Saymar was a student at the Beauty Secret Salon in De Willem where she was studying cosmetology. The last time she spoke to her mother was the day before she was brutally stabbed in her bed.
When she spoke to her on Friday afternoon, the mother said, her daughter told her “she was okay and she gon call me back.” The couple had apparently made up. According to the mother, her daughter was promised a house and her own salon by her husband upon his return from overseas.
The husband was said to be in Guyana since February and was scheduled to leave some time soon.
At 4.30 am Sunita Saymar was awakened by the police, who brought the news of her daughter’s death. The police then took her and her husband to the Hague residence where the murder occurred. According to Saymar’s stepfather her body was found on the carpet beside her bed in her bedroom.
The 11 stab wounds were said to be almost all inflicted on her back. The stepfather said that the only visible wound at the front of her body when they went to identify it, was one to the underside of her neck.
A post-mortem examination is expected to be performed on Wednesday.
Saymar’s death comes nearly three weeks after that of 29-year-old Bridgette Gangadin of Lot 3 Lusignan, East Coast Demerara. Gangadin’s body was discovered a stone’s throw away from the Vigilance Police Station with a crushed skull.
Her husband had alleged that she had jumped from his moving vehicle and was crushed in the process. After two autopsies, evidence of strangulation was discovered and Gangadin’s husband was charged with murder. A preliminary inquiry is currently ongoing.
