A Victoria, East Coast Demerara (ECD) mother of three was fatally stabbed while she was sleeping, allegedly by the father of her children and police have since launched a manhunt for the attacker.
Dead is Shemain Frank, 28, a janitor at the Enmore Nursery School and of Lot 317 Victoria Village, ECD. She was attacked shortly after 3 am yesterday.
Police, in a press statement, said that initial investigations have revealed that the victim’s brother saw the suspect in their yard and requested that he leave immediately. However, sometime later, the brother heard Shemain screaming and rushed to her aid, where he discovered his sister with a stab wound to her left breast and three panes missing from a window, the statement said.
At the home yesterday, family members were in shock and disbelief. Persons congregated at the house and were observed offering their condolences to the bereaved family.
Shemain’s sister Keshoma Frank related that they were all sleeping when the screams from her sibling woke them up.
“…she shouted ‘Magaman’ (the nickname of her brother) and he jump out and he said, ‘Shemain, oh shucks!’ And everybody run out of their rooms but before that, the eldest daughter, she saw when the father stabbed her [mother] and she started to cry. All that made us suspect something was wrong,” the sister related.
Keshoma explained that before the attack, she visited the washroom and observed the window panes missing but she paid it no heed since her sisters were cleaning up and she thought the panes had fallen off.
It is suspected that Shemain’s attacker jumped through the window and went to her room, which is the closest to the washroom and committed the act while she was sleeping. The sister said that the family believes he also used the opening to escape as markings “from some black dust was all over the washroom and the knife he used to stab her was found in the washroom.”
who gathered at the home yesterday.
“By time we could have run out, we couldn’t have done anything. I was trying to get her to tell me, to give me anything [about] what happened but I didn’t get no response. So we tried to get her to the hospital. By time we take her out of the house to get a taxi, the police vehicle come and took her to the hospital and she was pronounced dead on arrival,” the sister added.
Earlier in the night, Keshoma recounted, her brother was resting in the yard “and between sleep and wake, he felt a shadow on him.”
“…He said he jumped up and there was the guy in the yard. He recognise him to be the children father and he tell my brother, ‘yuh come in late. Like yuh tired’,” the sister recalled. She said that her brother asked the suspect to leave and then went inside, lay down on the chair and later retired to bed.
Shortly after he went to bed and she returned from using the washroom, Keshoma said, the family heard the scream and rushed to Shemain’s aid. They found her with the stab wounds. The injured woman was bleeding profusely.
Keshoma recounted that on Saturday night, the father took the children for an outing and after he returned with them, Shemain and another sister spoke with him briefly. She said that she was not privy to the details of that conversation. Like the other family members, Keshoma was trying to determine the motive for the attack.
She disclosed that her sister had shared a relationship with the suspect for approximately 10 years during which the children were conceived. During the years, her sister was a victim of domestic abuse, Keshoma said. She added that her sister decided to live alone but was still subjected to abuse from the suspect.
Last year, Keshoma said, they encouraged Shemain to move in with them and during the year, she took her children’s father to court and he was placed on a bond. He was only allowed to see the children at specific times.