The body of Teyana Raghbeer, 14, who was found dead floating in a trench aback Adelphi Village, East Canje, last Saturday is yet to be undergo a post-mortem examination for a cause of death determined.
While the police in ‘B’ Division have reportedly taken four fishermen (three brothers and a friend) into custody to aid with solving the case, the dead girl’s father believes the police are not following the right leads and are in fact “looking in the wrong area.”
Bearing what appeared to be multiple stab wounds, Raghbeer’s body was found around 13:15 hrs on Saturday floating in a trench by men who were supposedly fishing at the time. Subsequently, the police arrested four men. But according to Raghbeer’s father, Jaiprakash Raghbeer (Jaio), the police are yet to arrest the men he claims threatened the life of his daughter the day before she disappeared and was later found dead.
Raghbeer, who formally gave a statement to the police yesterday, said he informed them of a threat issued against his daughter on the evening of December 25 by six men who had accosted them on the road on their way back from a shop. According to the bereaved father, he was involved in a physical altercation with a few men on Christmas night, and his daughter who was with him at the time, attempted to defend him by hitting one of his attackers with a bottle. “Six of them tried to double bank me and beat me up. We went at a back shop to buy credit for the phone and my wife ex-partner and a few of his family and friends was making trouble and Teyana pick up a bottle and threw it at them.” At which point in time, he alleged, the men threatened her.
Raghbeer said he did not report the incident or the threat to the police because he did not take it seriously; a decision he has come to regret. While he believes his neglect may have cost him his daughter, Raghbeer said he does not intend to be negligent to her in death as well. And as such, he is demanding justice. He expressed the belief that the police investigating his daughter’s murder are “either incompetent or are deliberately trying to sabotage the case.” When asked to explain, he stated that to the best of his knowledge “they [the police] have not even questioned the men who attacked me or arrested them to get to the truth. I tell them these people threatened my daughter, and they do nothing. They arrest the men who found the body.”
Raghbeer, a Canje Secondary School student who resided at Lot 32 Reliance Abandon with her extended family was last seen alive sometime around 23:00 hrs on Friday. Raghbeer spent Boxing Day with her father, stepmother and brother at a gymkhana held in East Canje.
When they returned home in the evening, they continued celebrating the festive season on the bridge to their house before retiring indoors.
Raghbeer then took dinner upstairs for her parents, indicated she was descending the stairs to get drinks for them and then disappeared.
Raghbeer apparently opened the front door of the house, walked down the stairs, jumped the fence and vanished. Her absence was noticed sometime after 23:00 hrs, and a search was immediately launched. Though by her family’s admission, Raghbeer had a tendency for “going a bit overboard” in her enjoyment of life and had to be reprimanded on several occasions for engaging in inappropriate behaviour for her age, they said she would normally notify a family member if she was leaving the house to go somewhere. So it was strange that she left without telling them.
After realizing that Raghbeer was nowhere in the vicinity of the house, her father and stepmother begun searching for her and eventually found her the following day, albeit dead. The police fished her body out of the trench and her father was able to positively identify her as his daughter from her clothing and a scar on her forehead.
Raghbeer, the elder of two children, was adopted and raised along with her ten-year-old brother by their paternal grandparents, from the time they were toddlers.
After her biological parents divorced and remarried different people, she and her brother lived with her father, his parents (her adoptive parents) and his new wife.
She was scheduled to depart Guyana for the USA in a few weeks’ time.
An autopsy is expected to be performed on her body on Wednesday.
