Shaundell Warrick died yesterday, after spending almost a month in hospital following a severe beating allegedly at the hands of her “on-and-off” partner on New Year’s Day.
Her aunt, Allison Allicock said Warrick, 39, died at about 10.22am. Shortly before 11am, she explained, a nurse contacted relatives and asked them to report to the Georgetown Public Hospital. “When we got there,” Allicock recalled, “her head was swollen and her body was already very cold. I doubt that she died at 10.22. I think she died earlier…maybe after the morning visit, which ended at 7am.”
On New Year’s Day, Warrick was admitted to the Intensive Care Unit (ICU) at the hospital after she was rushed there with a fractured skull. Warrick spent the next 28 days in the ICU and was moved to the hospital’s High Dependency Unit (HDU) on Friday.
Allicock said that she does not believe her aunt should have been moved from the ICU so soon. Warrick, according to her, started showing slight signs of improvement before the move to the HDU. “In the ICU, I believe she was getting more attention and a higher standard of treatment. The HDU had a number of people and patients are not afforded the same attention there and I am sorry to say but I honestly believe that she would still be alive if they had left her in the ICU,” Allicock said.
Relatives, the woman further explained, were never informed by hospital staff that Warrick would be moved from the ICU. When relatives showed up during visiting time on Friday, it was then that they learnt that Warrick had been moved to the HDU. “Up to now nobody can’t tell us why they moved her from the ICU. We don’t get much information from the nurses because when we approach them they tell us to speak with the doctor and the only time we can find the doctor is early in the morning,” Allicock said.
The last relative to see Warrick alive, she said, was her 17-year-old son. The woman also leaves to mourn an 11-year-old son.
Warrick, Allicock recalled, had started to nod when relatives spoke with her.
Two days before her death, she said, Warrick pointed to the left side of her body and looked her older son in the eyes. “She could not move that side of her body and she could not speak.
She made motions with her mouth to speak and she just could not and she started to cry and pointed to her left side and we knew that she wanted to tell us she knew that things were very wrong with her body and she wanted to know why,” Allicock said.
For about 15 years, Allicock explained, her aunt had been in an “on and off” relationship with her alleged attacker, Rudolph London. The man has since been arraigned for attempting to murder Warrick and is currently on remand. Now that Warrick has passed on, relatives hope that the man will now be slapped with a murder charge.
Warrick, according to the woman, lived with London for five years.
During this time, the couple lived at Warrick’s Stevedore Housing Scheme, Georgetown home. After several “violent incidents,” the couple went their separate ways.
“He would beat her and they would break up and then some time after he would come with his sweet talk and she would go back,” Allicock said. “I don’t know why she could never leave him. I don’t know if it’s love or what but many times we advised her and that is all we could do.”
Last year, Allicock said, the couple had a reasonably peaceful time together until the alleged “cutlass thrashing” at Crane, West Coast Demerara, where London lives. It was that thrashing which left Warrick in a critical condition for weeks.
Meanwhile, Angela Warrick said that the deceased was the third of her eight children and the third one to die as well.
The 72-year-old woman said that she only managed to see Shaundell once since she was admitted to the hospital. “I only get to see her one time at the hospital because I couldn’t climb the steps to go up where she was…I have trouble with my joints,” the grieving mother said.
Angela said that she thought her daughter was getting better and was shocked when relatives told her that Shaundell had passed away. “They come home from visit and tell me that she squeezing their hand and that she opening her eye and so…I really thought that she would be coming home soon again,” Angela said.
Warrick was a teacher at the East Ruimveldt Nursery School.
London had also allegedly attacked her at her work place more than a year ago and threatened to harm her many times before the incident.
However, relatives said that the woman never took the threats to her life seriously.
