By Erica Williams and Tifaine Rutherford
A businessman early yesterday morning shot and killed his sleeping wife before turning the weapon on himself at their Campbellville home.
Dead are Ramdat Lokhnauth called ‘Moses’, 48, and Siromina Lokhnauth called ‘Nadia’, 42, of Delph and Garnett streets, Campbellville.
Siromina Lokhnauth had only returned to the country on Wednesday morning after being away for three months. The couple had been married for 15 years and while they have no children together, Ramdat was the father of 3 while Siromina was the mother of 2.
Ramdat, according to a close friend, moved from Williamsburg Village, Corentyne, Berbice in the 1980s and started business at the Delph Street location a few years ago.
A release from the police said that at about 04:30 hrs yesterday, the bodies of the Lokhnauths were found in their bedroom with gunshot wounds to their heads. Initial investigations led police to suspect that Ramdat Lokhnauth shot and killed his wife and then committed suicide.
Ramdat Lokhnauth was a licensed firearm holder. The firearm was recovered at the scene.
The Lokhnauths were discovered in their bed on the third flat of the building, which also houses their tyre and spare parts business—Guardian Auto Bazaar—by relatives who had been called to the house by the man’s son from a previous relationship, Rajin Lokhnauth. According to information, Ramdat Lokhnauth had called his son minutes before he killed himself.
The businessman had earlier in the morning given the keys to the house to the security guard and informed him to give the keys to his son when he arrived. “He gave me the keys around 3 o’clock and told me to give his son when he come. I ain’t hear nothing. Only when the son come, I hear he scream and then is when I hear he kill heself and he wife,” the guard said.
The dead woman’s sister, Valini, said she received a phone call at around 4 am from one of her nephews who informed her that something was not right at her sister’s home. “He called me and said that Rajin told him that something was wrong… So we went to the house and no one was answering when we were calling out, so we collected the keys and went upstairs,” she said.
The woman said they proceeded upstairs and into the couple’s bedroom and made the gruesome discovery. She said they were lying in a pool of blood and the gun was still in Ramdat’s hand. “It looks like she was asleep when he shoot she, from how she body was positioned. When I feel she foot, it been cold. So I called the police,” she said.
Asked about any problems between the two, she said Ramdat’s behaviour towards his wife was “hot and cold. At times he would be very loving to her and at other times he would yell at her in the presence of their employees,” the woman said.
She went on to say that three months ago, Ramdat informed his wife that he wanted a divorce. Some family members suspected this was because of infidelity on his part and this was what led Siromina to leave the country.
The distraught woman said that her sister had only returned on Wednesday after her husband approached her and expressed to her that he wanted her to return home as he felt she was great at running the business.
However, the dead man’s brother, Joseph, said it was Siromina who wanted the divorce and she wanted to sell the Delph Street property in order to get a divorce settlement, which he pegged at $40 million, but his brother was against it. “Although he agreed on the settlement, he did not agree on selling the property. As a result, he applied for a loan through the bank in order to pay the settlement,” the brother said.
He added that after not receiving word from the bank as to whether the loan would be approved, his brother bought a ticket for his wife to return to Guyana.
“After a while with this whole thing going on, my brother told me that he loved his wife and still wanted to be with her. He said that money was not a problem and that he would still give the money to his wife,” Joseph said.
The man said that after her arrival in the country on Wednesday, Siromina and Ramdat decided they were going to work on their marriage and they were to travel to Essequibo yesterday for marriage counselling with the pastor of their church. “Me, my wife and the two of them were supposed to go to a resort and they would have also gone for counselling,” Joseph said. He added that no one expected the businessman to commit such an act as they thought he and his wife had turned a fresh page in their rocky marriage.
