Husband sees murdered wife’s photo in newspapers

POLICE are investigating whether it was mere coincidence that the body of 28-year-old murder victim DebbieAnn Ramdath, was dumped on the roadside on Monday near the entrance to Corinth Teachers Training College, San Fernando — the same school she attended and where she was supposed to have written final exams, the day her body was found.

Police discovered the body after receiving an anonymous telephone call. Investigators are not sure whether she had been strangled, although a blue bandana was found tied around her neck. An autopsy is expected to be done on the body today at the Forensic Sciences Centre. Police were up to late yesterday questioning a 25-year-old man in connection with the incident. Investigators have not yet determined the motive for the killing. Ramdath’s body was identified around 10 am yesterday by her husband Ryan Sagar, a Fire-fighter, attached to the Chagaunas fire Station, after he saw his wife’s body in the newspaper.    Sagar told police his wife left home in her blue B13 Sentra car around 9 pm to go to shop and then to her mother’s home at Morne Diablo, where she planned to use her computer to review a project for her final exams, the following day.  But she never returned home. Sagar said he was going to lodge a missing persons report yesterday but saw the picture in the papers.

The murdered woman’s car was found at Gulf City carpark around 3 pm yesterday totally intact. Police are now checking for fingerprints. Ramdath had been married to her husband for the past ten months and lived with her in-laws at Papourie Road, Diamond Village, off San Fernando. When Newsday visited her family’s home at Morne Diablo yesterday, her mother, Lynette Ramdath, 52, said she found it strange that her daughter did not call to let her know that she was coming. “She always call before she come by me...she never comes in the night. I did not know that she was coming,” Lynette said. She added that she found out her daughter was missing around 9 am on Monday, when her daughter’s husband called to find out whether she had left to go sit the exams.

The grieving woman told Newsday she told him, she never saw her daughter that night. However, Ramdath added that she was not worried because she always believed that her daughter could take care of herself. She only found out that she had been murdered when she saw her picture in the newspaper yesterday morning. She said her daughter and husband were just getting over the loss of their baby girl, who died last December, a mere 10 days after the child was born. Describing her daughter as a brave and strong-minded person, she said DebbieAnn was doing her final exams at the training college to get her teaching diploma. She would have graduated in September.

Ramdath said her daughter was also enrolling to study psychology at the University of the West Indies after her exams, since she had “loved” that field.  With tears in her eyes, the woman said she could not imagine who would want to kill her daughter. She said the last time she saw her daughter was on Saturday when she (Debbie Ann) and her husband came to visit her but stayed briefly. Vice Principal of the College, Martin Jones, told Newsday yesterday that he believed that DebbieAnn’s body was deliberately dumped in front of the school compound. “We are now making preparations to honour her in a way that befits her and to respond to the affront in the way her life was snuffed out and putting her body in front of the college,” he said. The principal said they intend to hold a solemn service in her honour today at the school. Jones said her peers were upset over her death since she was part of their family. Investigations are continuing.