(Trinidad Express) In one week, five women and a baby girl have been attacked by men known to them.
Four of them have died.
The latest victim was New Grant mother Laura Sankar, 34, who was chopped to death on Saturday at her Post Office Trace home by a 41-year-old relative.
Her teenage son who tried to help was unable to stop the cutlass attack. The 16-year-old, who heard the woman’s screams while he was in a bedroom around 5.30 p.m., ran to her aid.
He saw her being chopped with a cutlass by the man but his shouts for him to cease were unsuccessful.
The boy then tried to intervene with a stick, but this too proved futile. He ran screaming from the house with his seven-year-old sibling.
They ran to a neighbour.
Two other teenage family members, who were also getting ready with the boys at the home to be taken to a car show by Sankar, also fled the house.
Sankar’s eldest sister, Sherry Ann Sankar, yesterday recalled that she received a phone call on Saturday about Laura, and then called her sister’s phone.
She said the suspect answered.
“I say, where Laura (and) he say that how she dead,” she said, adding that the man said, “That’s it dey, I fed up.”
She told reporters she heard the suspect had been drinking that day and that he and her sister got into an argument.
“She was sitting in the hammock in the shed outside…She went inside and he was behind her with the cutlass and there is where he chopped her to death,” Sherry Ann said.
She said her sister was cornered in the bathroom and could not escape.
A man sitting outside the house was soon after held by the police.
Sherry Ann said she was unaware of the reason for Saturday’s argument between her sister and the suspect.
She said Laura used to be accused of receiving text messages from men, even when random messages came from the phone’s network provider. Sherry Ann said that as far as she was aware, her sister did not make any sort of report to the police in relation to the suspect. She said she used to speak to Laura about him.
“I never went too deep because, at the end of the day, is your choice to make,” she said.
She said whatever stress the suspect was facing, he did not have to kill her sister.
In light of attacks against women, she prayed for God to grant wisdom to those in authority to be able to deal with the situation.
Sherry Ann said Laura’s 16-year-old and the seven-year-old were yesterday receiving counselling through the Police Service and will be cared for by relatives.
The other children who were in the house at the time were back with their parents.
Sherry Ann remembered her sister, who worked as a school bus driver, as a “gem” who took care of the children in the family.
She recently completed a nursing course and Sherry Ann said she planned to pursue this further and was considering migrating.
On Monday, a 64-year-old woman of South Oropouche was chopped by two men who alighted from a car being driven by a former relative.
Two of her finger-tips were severed and she also sustained injuries to her head and right knee.
On Tuesday, Tara Geeta Ramsaroop and her 14-month-old daughter, Jada, were killed at the house of Rishi Motilal. Ramsaroop had had a relationship with Motilal and he was also Jada’s father. He appeared before the court on Friday and two murder charges were read to him.
On Wednesday Sunita Mohammed, 50, of Gasparillo, died after she struck her head during an argument with a relative at her home. It is alleged that she was pushed.
She was taken to the hospital where she died.
On Friday, Anna Ellis was attacked at her St James home by a man known to her. She was stabbed multiple times and her 12-year-old son was also kidnapped.
She was treated at hospital and the boy was eventually released.
