By Shabna Rahman
The police believe that 29-year-old Shannen Obermulla-Mohamed of Parika, East Bank Essequibo was beaten to death on Tuesday and her body burned.
The suspect is a mason and is in custody. DNA testing is be done to confirm that the remains are those of Obermulla-Mohamed.
The murder is believed to have occurred around 8:30 am on Tuesday when Obermulla-Mohamed went to check on work being done by the mason on her house.
It was not until 9 pm on Tuesday that relatives realised something was amiss. They contacted the police who found a knife, a sledgehammer and a crowbar at the scene. Obermulla-Mohamed apparently suffered a hit to her head with the crow bar. According to relatives, her body seemed to have been wrapped with a hammock and a tarpaulin that was attached to the house, before it was taken outside.
It was lying face down and her phone was in the pocket of her top. The relatives also believe that the fire started from her feet up because only the bones remained.
The unfinished house is located a good distance behind the home of her mother-in-law, Jean Mohamed and is accessed through a trail. The only other house nearby, is several feet away to the left, but the occupants were not at home at the time.
Anisa Persaud, the victim’s niece, told Stabroek News that they were alerted about a fire at the premises. She and an aunt rushed to investigate. While going, they started taking videos of the scene, as the man was picking up boards from around the yard and adding it to the fire.
As they got closer, he calmly walked away as if he had done nothing wrong. In an effort to save the materials, and without having a clue that the victim’s body was under it, they tried to extinguish the fire with sand and with water that was coming slowly from a standpipe at the back.
They started calling her phone to inform her, but there was no answer.
Before making her daily checks at the house, Mohamed would leave her footwear at her mother-in-law’s house.
According to Jean, “… she does wear an old slippers to go down at the back because it got mud and so you know… So I saw her slippers in the afternoon and realised that she’s somewhere around. I said she usually come and would be around in the neighbourhood… at some one of she husband’s cousins’ (house).”
She became worried though, when it started to get dark and the woman’s slippers were still there and they had not seen nor heard from her.
At that point relatives decided to check the rubble and were shocked to discover her skeletal and partly charred remains.
The police were called and they made checks for the man. They managed to apprehend him.
The suspect appeared to be a drug user and is also said to be of unsound mind. He was skilful at his trade though and it was not the first time that he had done work for the family. They showed this newspaper a neatly tiled floor and a concrete fence he had constructed recently for them.
The police in a statement said that the man was known as `Rodwell’.
