(Trinidad Guardian) “These men are demon. They don’t have no God in them,” lamented the grandmother of 15-month-old Sariah Williams who was fatally chopped by a relative during a domestic dispute on Sunday night.
Bleeding profusely from a chop wound to her head, baby Sariah died minutes later while undergoing emergency treatment at the San Fernando General Hospital.
“I blame myself because I should ah put a stop to this and stop forgiving and forgiving. If I put a stop my grandchild would ah be alive,” said grandmother Michelle Jillian Williams, 50, during an interview home at her Sion Drive, Toradale, Ste Madeleine.
Bloodstains were still visible in the gallery of the house where the baby was chopped, as well as on the steps leading to the yard and road.
Pointing to scars on her body, Williams, a mother of seven, spoke about enduring 24 years of abuse by the relative.
She had planned to go to the magistrates’ court yesterday and apply for a protection order, but tragedy struck on Sunday night.
Williams, a security officer, recalled that she had finished working a 6 am to 6 pm shift and met Sariah’s mother Nikita and her eight children at her home.
Nikita had curry cue earlier that day to raise funds to purchase tablet devices and school supplies for her children– the eldest is 14 years old.
Knowing that her daughter would have been in the heat cooking, she offered to wash the wares because she was concerned that her daughter could get a stroke.
However, Williams said the relative started cursing her and complaining that she was allowing her children to use her.
Williams and her daughter then sat down in the gallery with Sariah on Williams’ lap. But, as the relative continued ranting her daughter told him to stop quarrelling and go to bed.
Williams said he went inside and then came back out with a speed.
He just fly out with a blade. I ent even see when he fly out through the drawing-room and into the gallery. He just start to chop the baby. She get chop in her head and blood start to flow and she was only blacking out,” she said.
She said her daughter grabbed Sariah and dove to the ground trying to shield her with her body. But, the suspect just kept firing chops.
“He keep coming so I had to go over them and brakes and that’s how I get my two fingers chop and when he coming again I brakes with my right hand,” she said.
By this time relatives and neighbours were already running up the steps of their home to their rescue.
Williams said the relative ran into a room and locked the door until the police arrived.
Recalling how she rushed out of the house with her bleeding granddaughter, she said, “The child was only blacking out. The child could not even cry because blood was only flowing from she head.”
A neighbour took the baby and her mother to the hospital and on the way, they flagged down a passing police vehicle and told them what transpired.
When the police got there and were escorting the suspect to the police vehicle, Williams said relatives and friends attacked him forcing the police to use pepper spray to keep them at bay.
She recalled that years ago she made a report and took out a restraining order, but then she forgave him. But, Williams said the violence did not stop.