A family of five lost their home after their East Ruimveldt apartment was gutted by a fire allegedly set by a jealous girlfriend yesterday.
Homeless are Sherwin Barrington and four others who resided at 192 Pineapple Street, East Ruimveldt. Their neighbours, who lived in the adjacent flat, were forced to relocate for the night after the fire scorched the adjoining wall.
Barrington explained last evening that Doniel Lovell, his girlfriend and the mother of his two-year-old son, arrived at his home yesterday afternoon and accused him of having another relationship. He claimed that after refuting Lovell’s accusations, the woman set a mattress in the upper flat of the house on fire and took off with their son.
“A yellow cab dropped her off and she came in the yard and tell me how I got some woman… I turn and say ‘girl stop listening to people talking, this time is for money. We got to focus on getting money.’ She say ‘you gon know what I talking about.’ She left and go inside, she come out back and show me a lil jersey and I say ‘Man that’s my daughter jersey; [the one] who does work at Churches.’ I said, ‘If you want to wait, you can wait and see when she come home,’” Barrington related.
Stabroek News understands that Lovell then left the yard and went back inside the house, before returning to the yard, where she allegedly threatened Barrington.
“She come out back and say that I gon punish and I ga fa punish and walk out the yard. She go up the road, turn back and come up to the gate, turn back and go up the road again then proceed to the Mandela Avenue road,” Barrington said.
Subsequent to this, the man said, his neighbours saw smoke emanating from the building and raised an alarm.
“The neighbours start shout, ‘Sherwin! Sherwin! Look what going on! Fire in the house! Fire in the house!’ I was still down here with the guys; ain digging nothing cause is mah child mother, but by time I look around, I see big fire upstairs and I try to run upstairs to see what I could do but I couldn’t do nothing. The whole bed alone was on fire, she light the bed and I couldn’t save anything because the fire start to spread rapid,” the man told Stabroek News.
Based on observations made by this newspaper while at the scene, both the lower and upper flat of the apartment were severely damaged by the blaze.
Meanwhile, Barrington’s 78-year-old neighbour Lionel Narine told Stabroek News that he and his family of six were all at home when the fire started. They were forced to evacuate their home after other neighbours raised an alarm.
“The entire family, six of us, were home at the time when my son-in-law smelled it and the people at the back start holler, ‘fire, fire’. We smell this thing and we start see the black smoke. It ain tek long you know, but one thing, the fire brigade was very responsive and saved it from spreading more,” Narine said.
He also noted that though only the adjoining wall had been scorched, the family will await an examination of the building before moving back in.
“We can’t go back in right now. We have to come back in the morning to see what’s going on, but nothing ain burn really, just the wall. Persons also saw some sparking but we don’t want to take any chances because they can be undermined; it could look okay to the naked eye but then it collapse,” the man contended.
Stabroek News was told that both families would have been accommodated by relatives last evening.
Meanwhile, Barrington said police who visited the scene, took a report from him but he will have to follow-up in the morning. He noted too that since the blaze, no one has heard from or seen Lovell or the child.
