(Trinidad Express) I don’t want to die.
This from Chaguanas businesswoman Rachael Sukhdeo, woman who broke her silence yesterday on the carnage that has surrounded her since the killing of her husband, Sheron Sukdeo almost two years ago.
With her husband, brother, brother in law, neighbour, employees, and friends gunned down, and two assassination attempts on her, Rachael Sukhdeo asked: “What kind of life is this?”.
In an interview with her friend, talk show host Ian Alleyne, Sukhdeo said that she does not have enemies, but is a mother and a make-up artist.
“People I don’t even know called me and said big money on my head. Why are you all doing me this? When I met my husband we had nothing. I don’t care about anything material”, the mother of two said.
On Sunday, killers tracked her to a cooking lime at Nia Valley in New Grant, and using high-powered weaponry they shot and killed her close friends Craig Hoi Pong and Neera Ramnath.
The firepower disfigured Ramnath, who was struck at least 40 times to the face and head.
Ramnath, a mother of two, was given her final rites yesterday in a close casket funeral at Chaguanas, and then interred at the Waterloo Cremation Site.
“This is the second murder attempt on my life. I am not in any crime, no illegal activity, I am not involved in anything that could bring an argument much more to bring death upon me. I have no involvement in anything. Look how far they are taking it”, Sukhdeo said.
“This is the second time that people came with guns to kill me. I have no enemies. I don’t have one single enemy”.
Sukhdeo said that since the assassination attempt last May after she left a night club in Chaguanas, she has only left her house twice. She said she attended a Carnival fete three weeks ago, and then went to Nia Valley estate to a cooking lime.
She said that she was hurting since the killings of Hoi Pong and Ramnath, whom she described as “two of the closest persons to me, two of my loved ones”.
Video footage showed that Hoi Pong was also with Sukhdeo when she was attacked by gunmen in the car park of Hanggers Extreme, Heartland Plaza.
“This is so unfair. The entire country knows that Sheron did not deal me a good hand. I went through so with this boy but I would never leave him because we had a family together, and I tried my best to make it work. Now that he died, you all are trying to leave my children without a father and a mother? I am everything to my children”, she said.
“Why are you all doing this, because you want a piece of land, a house or a car to drive? My life worth that? I don’t care for any of that, I just want to raise my children”.
Sukhdeo became a widowed mother on March 26, 2018, when her husband, whom she admitted “had a colourful past” was gunned down. She said that she had been in a relationship with him since she was 14 years old, but maintained that she had “no enemies”.
Sukhdeo said that on Sunday when the gunfire erupted, she and her children scattered, and ran in different directions. “I had two children there and I could not even protect them. I was screaming, looking for my son and I could not find him. My daughter hid in a bamboo patch. What kind of life is this?”
Sukhdeo said that since the attempt on her life last May, and even moreso since the double murder on Sunday, that she has been attempting to engage the attention of the police to assist her. She said that she has been contacting homicide detectives.
“I am all my children have I don’t want to die and leave them. Look how many others have died – my husband was murdered, my brother was murdered, my brother’s friend was murdered Who are these people? God?”, she said
Alleyne asked her: “Are you marked for death? Would there be a third time?”
“Why not? The only thing that these people are behind are material things. Whatever my husband worked for. Now they are trying to get me out of the picture”, she said.
Sukhdeo said that she has been in contact with the police several times this week, particularly officers of the homicide division.
“I’m left with no other choice now but to speak out and beg the police for their assistance”, she said.
