(Trinidad Express) A 17-year-old girl was chopped to death and her boyfriend seriously injured when several men stormed their Valencia home early yesterday morning.
The girl has been identified as Shelly-Ann Amanda Pamponette of Peter Avenue, off the One and a Half Mile Mark Road, Valencia.
She died at the Sangre Grande District Hospital shortly after 2.a.m. while undergoing emergency surgery.
A post-mortem conducted on her body yesterday at the Forensic Science Centre, St James, revealed she died from multiple chop injuries about the body.
Her boyfriend, Joel John, 23, of John Lane, off Benny Trace in the same area, remains in stable condition at hospital nursing multiple chop injuries about the body, police said.
Up to late yesterday police had arrested two men, ages 25 and 28, from the area in connection with the killing.
Paponette’s mother, Sharmila Mohammed, said yesterday her family had been repeatedly threatened by several people in the area who identified themselves as thugs.
Mohammed, the mother of four boys and two girls, said despite threats and verbal abuse her family had been subjected to by a few so-called bad boys in the area, she remained firm in her position that she wasn’t going to allow anyone to bully her.
“I stand up for them, head-on-head and I never backed down so I feel they had a problem with that,” she said while looking at a picture of Pamponette outside the Forensic Science Centre.
She said shortly before her daughter was attacked, she warned her not to visit her boyfriend’s nearby home because she had a bad feeling that something terrible might have happened.
Mohammed said earlier in the day, her daughter was verbally abused and threatened by another woman who lived a short distance away.
“I never know I’d be going through this. She is an innocent child who was killed for no reason,” Mohammed said.
They told us earlier in the day ‘we go wet down (shoot up) that house tonight’ and like they really wet down the house cause they kill my daughter,” Mohammed added.
She added that while she was at her nearby home, they observed a car being driven in a suspicious manner, then they later heard screams coming from John’s home.
“We ran up and saw a man coming outside with a cutlass with blood on it, then John came out and said his girlfriend get chop up too. I had begged her not to go up by him because I had a bad feeling that something bad may have happened.
“But she wanted to just eat a box of Japs (fried chicken) he (John) had brought and she said she was coming back because he recently came back from working out at sea,” Mohammed said.
Pamponette’s murder has taken the toll to 41, according to an Express tally.
A team of officers led by ASP Neville Sankar, Sgt Jermaline Mitchell and Cpl Mikaya Davis of the Region II Homicide Bureau of Investigations and Cpls Junior Bernard, Allan Khan including PCs Wallace and Rajkumar of the Valencia CID, visited the scene. Bernard is probing the incident.
