A 34-year old food vendor last evening went berserk and fatally chopped two of his three children as the trio lay asleep at their Soesdyke, East Bank Demerara home.
Dead is 10 year old Belika Blanchard Singh and her four-year-old brother Daniel Blanchard of Dr Charles Sand Road, Soesdyke. Their six year old sister, Joy Blanchard who sustained numerous chop wounds about her body, was hooked up to a life support machine at the Georgetown Public Hospital (GPH) early this morning.
The two children died instantly and relatives later rushed the injured girl to the hospital.
According to an aunt of the children, she received a call from her brother sometime after 9:30 pm last night in which the man told her that he was going to harm the three children. She immediately contacted another sibling and the trio drove to Soesdyke where they encountered a gruesome scene in which the children lay motionless on the bed of their one-bedroom home in a desolate area aback Soesdyke.
The children’s father was in the process of tying a cement sling to the rafters of the home to hang himself but was cautioned by relatives and later handed over to the police.
The woman noted that she and her brother and a friend picked up the injured Joy Blanchard and rushed her to the Diamond Diagnostic Centre after which she was referred to the GPH. She said that they also reported the matter to the Madewini Police Station and several police ranks later journeyed to the scene.
A traumatized relative told Stabroek News at the hospital this morning that the children’s father and their mother were in a turbulent relationship in which they frequently separated. He said that sometime last week, the children’s mother left their home for an interior location and told the children’s father that she was going to work as a cook. He said that a month ago, the man told relatives that he was going to commit suicide and that he would have also “taken them with he when he doing it”.
The man’s sister would usually communicate with her his problems, a relative noted, and last evening the woman became worried that something was amiss.
When this newspaper arrived at the scene some 30 minutes after the gruesome incident, a team of police officers, including forensic experts were carrying out their investigations into the incident as the suspect sat at the back of the police vehicle. Inside the house the two children lay on the bed on their sides and reports are that they were all asleep when the chopping occurred.
The house where the incident occurred is the last on the rugged sand road and the family’s immediate neighbour lives more than 300 metres away. The home in which the incident occurred is located among thick vegetation and no one in the area seemed aware of the situation.
The man would usually sell boiled corn in the city on weekends and holidays and reports are that when his common law wife left the home last week, he grew angry and relatives noted that he seemed “uneasy” for most of the week.
Police later recovered the cutlass apparently used by the man to carry out the attack.
