(Trinidad Express) Hours after a 13-year-old Rio Claro schoolgirl attended an identification parade to point out the perpetrators who had sexually assaulted her, she and her uncle were shot dead and her father critically wounded in their home early yesterday.
Andrea Lallan and her uncle Sylvan Lallan were found dead in their house at Old Mayaro Road in Libertville.
Andrea’s father, Eddy Lallan, sustained gunshot injuries to the head and neck.
He survived but is in critical condition at hospital.
The killer pounced on the family in their small wooden home and fired nine bullets, said neighbours who did not want to be identified.
Eddy sought help from a neighbour who took him to the Rio Claro District Health Facility where medical personnel contacted the Rio Claro police.
Officers responded to the house and found Andrea’s body in her bed.
Her uncle, a paraplegic, was found dead on the floor of the living room. Andrea was a Standard Five pupil of St Therese RC Primary School and attended school up to Thursday.
When the Express visited the community yesterday, residents gathered near the house and said they heard the gunfire but were too frightened to look outside.
“It was exactly at two o’clock in the morning I heard nine shots. Then there was just silence. No car door, no car speeding, no rattling in the bushes. Nothing,” said the resident.
A sister of Eddy and Sylvan, who did not give her name, wept as she pulled up to the house and said prayers.
She declined to be interviewed.
Andrea’s mother, Christine Phillip, spoke to the Express outside the Forensic Science Centre in Federation Park where she identified the body of her daughter yesterday.
Andrea aspired to be a police officer as she was a “good investigator,” she recalled.
“She wanted to be a policewoman. She was never rude to me. When I talked to her she used to listen. She never left her uncle and her father. She liked plenty of friends,” said Phillip.
The mother said she last saw her daughter on Thursday night after she and her father exited the Rio Claro Police Station and were on the Naparima Mayaro Road. “When she saw me last night, she called me by the road. I said ‘what your father had you doing this hour of the night in the station?’ She said they went for a report in the station last night and whatever. Then they went and bought bread,” said Phillip.
The mother, who does not reside with her daughter, said Andrea took care of her father and uncle and residents assisted them with meals.
She said in her last conversation with Andrea, her daughter said she wanted to spend time with her.
Phillip said, “She told me don’t forget we are having a bazaar on Sunday. I told her it’s my birthday. She said come down and we will lime. Then she went with the father, and she gave me a right and said bye.”
Police investigations into the double homicide are continuing by detectives of the Homicide Bureau of Region II in the Eastern Division.
