A second person has been arrested, police said today, even as the results of post-mortem examinations revealed that the mother and her two children, who were found brutally murdered on Saturday evening in their Anna Catherina home, died of haemorrhagic shock due to the wounds they received.
Jennifer Persaud, 41, and her sons Afridi Bacchus, 6, and Jadon Persaud 18 months were discovered on Saturday evening in the woman’s bedroom with stabs wounds and slit throats. The woman was found lying in a pool of blood on her bed, clad in nightwear, with the body of the older child strung over her. The infant was found on the ground beside the bed also in a pool of blood with his neck partially severed.
Police yesterday told Stabroek News that two persons are currently in custody assisting with investigations.
The woman’s 23-year-old partner, and father of her youngest child, from whom she had recently separated, was taken into police custody when he turned up at the scene on Saturday evening. Relatives had related that two bags packed with clothing for the infant had been found.
The mother of six was the owner of a thriving liquor store in her community, but had shared a tumultuous two-year relationship with her partner, neighbours and relatives reported. She had recently evicted him after a fight. “He does ill treat she a lot because a lot of people does talk about it,” her daughter Angela told this newspaper.
Relatives on Saturday became worried after they had not heard from the woman all day and calls to her home went unanswered. This, along with the fact that the last time they had heard from her was around 2 pm on Friday and that the business remained closed on its busiest day, Saturday, saw them travelling from the East Bank Demerara to visit her. After calls still went unanswered, relatives climbed into the house. It was then they made the gruesome discovery.
Six-year-old Afridi did not live with his mother and was visiting her after his father left him for the weekend.
Persaud was described as industrious as she had had toiled to get her economic life to what it now is after poor beginnings. “She is a hard-working woman. She come here with nothing, she work very hard to build this up, now she have to leave it,” said her daughter Angela.
Persaud moved to Anna Catherina, from the East Coast Demerara, after splitting up with her first husband and rented a place in the community and opened a shop. “From working in that shop deh, she buy this land empty with a lil house and that’s how she build… she work and build this she self,” Angela added.
