Six years after she had the horrific experience of being doused with a corrosive substance that has left her facially disfigured, 31-year-old Jo-Ann Lynch may soon get justice as the woman behind the attack is believed to have been nabbed in neighbouring Trinidad.
Crime Chief Seelall Persaud told the Sunday Stabroek that the Guyana Police Force was informed by its counterpart in Trinidad that police may have arrested Onika Sinclair, who is behind that horrific June 2006 attack on Lynch. Persaud said the Trinidadian police requested some information in an effort to verify that the woman is indeed Sinclair and the Guyana police have since provided that information.
For her part Lynch is hoping that the woman is indeed Sinclair and that she would be placed before the courts and brought to justice. She indicated that on Wednesday last she received a call from a police officer who requested a photograph of Sinclair and who informed that the woman may have been nabbed. Her mother was in Georgetown at the time and provided the photograph and she was also shown a warrant for Sinclair’s arrest, which she was told would be provided to the Trinidadian police.
“I really do hope it is her now and I would get some justice,” Lynch said from her Bartica home recently.
If Sinclair is indeed in Trinidad it comes as no surprise to Lynch, who since in 2009 became her own sleuth and had tracked the woman down in Trinidad on the popular Facebook. She had befriended the woman using a fake profile and became riled by the steady posts by the woman on her social escapades. The angry and hurt Lynch sent a photograph of her disfigured face to the woman and asked her if she remembered her and immediately the Facebook account was shut down.
Lynch had contacted the authorities in Trinidad and informed them of the crime committed by Sinclair and they had indicated that they needed some information from Guyanese law enforcement before they could arrest the woman.
In 2010 Persaud had told this newspaper that on October 15, 2009, the police force sent information on Sinclair to their Trinidadian counterparts.
Sinclair has been charged in absentia with the crime but the case has been stalled.
In 2006, Lynch was involved in a relationship with the father of Sinclair’s two children, Mark Moore, when early one morning Sinclair, with the support of others, ambushed Lynch in the apartment she had shared with Moore in Bartica. Sinclair had travelled from Georgetown to Bartica and entered the apartment but Lynch had barricaded herself in a room. However, following a conversation, and with her sister being present Lynch was made to believe that Sinclair would no longer attack her. However, as soon as she opened the door the acid was thrown in her face and Sinclair immediately left and caught a boat out of the township and has never been seen since.
‘Moving on’
For her part Lynch has been slowly moving ahead with her life even though she is cruelly reminded of the incident every time she looks in the mirror or has difficulty breathing which is caused by the damage caused to her lungs by the acid.
She also cannot see properly out of one eye but that has not stopped her from returning to her designing as she had just begun to make it as a young budding designer when the tragedy struck.
Lynch also told the Sunday Stabroek that she now also has a fuel business and coupled with the money from her designing she is able to support herself and her 10-year-old with continued support from relatives and friends.
“My designing business has been doing okay. I just make clothes and people would come and buy. I plan to put a line out for Emancipation,” Lynch told this newspaper.
She said while she tries not to put too much strain on her eyes she will continue to design as she wants to be independent. She also hopes to one day raise enough money to have surgery performed on her by world renowned surgeon Dr Mohammed Jawad who operates out of the US and who has been in contact with her.
She pointed out that it is very expensive but she is not losing faith as anything is possible.
She was connected with Dr Jawad through Katie Piper a British woman who herself was disfigured with corrosive acid which was thrown at her by a former boyfriend. Lynch had connected with the woman on Facebook and the two remain friends today.
She told the Sunday Stabroek that she continues to draw her strength from God and she draws her joy from her daughter who is doing very well in school. One of the worrying things though is that sometimes she goes a week without eating any solids and would only force herself to drink water or juice since she does not feel hungry. She said she was told by a doctor that this is one of the effects of the burns; in those times she would neither be depressed or under any stressful situation. Also, there are times when the entire left side of her body would become numb and for a while she would be unable to move her leg or arm and this started in 2008.
Last year she dabbled in politics when she campaigned for A Partnership for National Unit (APNU) but it was an experience that has left her disenchanted and not one she plans to repeat. Lynch declined to go into details but would only say politics is not for her.
Sometimes she does not want to talk about the incident and would be short with some concerned persons, but she explained that she has just become frustrated over the years of not getting justice that she sees no point in talking.
“People don’t understand the level of frustration I feel and sometimes I just cannot take the stress anymore,” she lamented.
She said a lot of the time she is very angry and she is forced to seclude herself “to stay out of trouble.
“People see me smiling but sometimes it is hard, I am still alive and doing things but sometimes I wonder why Onika had to do this to me. But thank God I never thought about suicide,” she said adding that her supportive relatives have really kept her going.
Mark Moore has since married another woman and lives between the US and Guyana. His two children live in the US but Lynch said he would travel through Bartica to the interior on a regular basis as his skill as an excavator operator has been very lucrative for him. She would from time to time be told that he is seen in Bartica but he does not contact her and she wishes that one day people would understand that she prefers not to be told about him.
Sinclair’s relatives had claimed Lynch tormented her before the incident, but Lynch continues to deny this and said it was Sinclair who travelled to Bartica from time to time. On the day of the attack, when Sinclair gained access to Moore’s apartment where Lynch was, it was the landlady’s sister who gave her the spare key.
After she committed the act, she was assisted in her escape to Georgetown.
