Ramdarrie Rajpattie and Natalie Loncke are among four victims of domestic violence who have been allegedly murdered by their partners so far this year and their partners were still on the run last night.
For more than three decades of her life Ramdarrie, 57, struggled along with her reputed husband to support themselves and 16 children; 4 of whom are deceased. Last Monday Ramdarrie was allegedly beaten severely by the man, Bertie Baicho, as their two adult children watched. She succumbed to her wounds three days later.
Loncke, 41, was attacked by her boyfriend of a few months in the bedroom of her Norton Street, Wortmanville, Georgetown home. In this case too, Loncke’s 19-year-old daughter Renatha Craig witnessed the attack and was injured by the attacker as well.
Neither woman had reported previous instances of abuse to police nor, despite advice from relatives to leave their abusers, did they end the “damaging” relationships.
Relatives of both Ramdarrie and Loncke expressed hope yesterday that police will be able to arrest the women’s attackers soon.
“I just want to know that this man if off the road,” a relative of Loncke told this newspaper.
When Stabroek News revisited the Norton Street location yesterday, Loncke’s apartment where she lived with her two children was closed. Investigators were present in the second floor apartment of Patricia Abrams taking a statement from the woman.
Abrams had told Stabroek News that she heard Loncke and her lover arguing and shortly after she saw the man riding away on his bicycle. Minutes later Loncke was found bleeding profusely in her bedroom. She was stabbed in the head and died about 15 minutes after arriving at the Georgetown Public Hospital (GPHC).
“She daughter ain’t going to stay there…de chile can barely look at de place,” another resident in the yard told Stabroek News.
Craig, the resident explained, had gone to stay with her grandmother at Hadfield Street. When Stabroek News visited that location relatives were gathered lamenting the loss of Loncke. A female relative, who did not identify herself, told this newspaper that investigators had taken a statement from the traumatized Craig.
“She is in no state to speak with anyone or do anything,” the relative said. “Right now it is her grandmother [Loncke’s mother] who is holding everything together.”
The relative further explained that police had visited the home of Loncke’s attacker in an effort to get a picture of the man so that they can issue a wanted bulletin. “They [police] told us that when they visited the man’s house they spoke with his mother and the woman told them that she did not have a recent picture of the man…they said that she gave them a teenage picture.”
Loncke and her attacker, this newspaper was told, shared an “in and out” relationship. After attacking the woman the man fled with the bloody knife. This newspaper also understands that he had abused his previous partner as well.
“People tell she that this man got a history but she didn’t hear any of we over he,” a close friend said.
“Rum was like dem escape…”
Seema Rajpattie had a similar story to tell about her parents. The woman, speaking with Stabroek News via telephone last evening, said that one of her earliest memories is of her intoxicated father beating her mother.
“Both ah dem used to be good, good and then he does go and drink and every time he drink he does come back and beat she and she start drink too,” Seema said.
The woman said that up to 7 last night police were yet to locate Baicho.
“He got to get catch though because is right in the area he got to deh…everybody deh watching out for he,” she said.
Seema said that a group of male relatives and residents had helped police to comb a section of the Laluni Creek, Linden/Soesdyke area for the suspect. The man, they believed, is armed with a cutlass.
Before her mother died, Ramdarrie told her eldest daughter that they had to “jail” their father for what he had done to her. Sometime around 4pm on Sunday, Seema had said, her mother came to her house and said she and Baicho had been arguing. The woman spent the night and the next morning [Monday] her reputed husband came in search of her, dealt her a severe beating with a cutlass and his hand and then fled.
“Nobody na run behind he cause he had cutlass,” Seema said.
Another relative, who declined to have her name published, told Stabroek News that she has been living in the Laluni area for more than 30 years. “When dem move here [Ramdarrie and Baicho] dem de already got dem two big children,” she said.
The woman said that both Ramdarrie and Baicho were hard workers and had always scrambled at any work they could get to bring in some money for their family. “Is so life stay in yah so…people don’t got nothing fuh do so dem does mek children,” she said, “and de mo’ children dem mek de mo’ he used to drink and beat she when dem short ah money…it na easy yuh know.”
She and Ramdarrie, the woman said, were very close and over the years she had advised her to move to Berbice where her oldest son lives. However, Ramdarrie refused to go and it was in her latter years, the woman explained, that the woman started to consume alcohol as well.
“She tell me one time that if she got to tek licks she going to tek it drunk because you doesn’t feel it so,” the woman recalled. “Rum was like dem escape from dem problems. At least me think so.”
