Father, son dead in murder/suicide

A father and son died an hour apart at hospital in tragic circumstances yesterday, after Raymond Anthony of Siparia had forced the deadly herbicide paraquat down the throat of six-year-old Ray Shawn on Wednesday. The boy’s mother, Shiveron Joseph-Anthony, 27, who had been at her son’s bedside since the incident on Wednesday, screamed out in grief at the San Fernando General Hospital (SFGH) around 9 am, when Ray Shawn died at the hospital’s Paediatric Ward. An hour later, the man whom the mother said “should live to suffer for his heinous act,” died at Ward 12. “I am sorry he (Ray Shawn) had to go, but God knows best,” she said. It was a horrifying end to what had been a brief estranged relationship between Shiveron and husband Anthony, both of Antoine Trace, Quarry Village.

Shiveron moved out of Anthony’s home two weeks ago, and began staying with her mother at Buenos Aires Village some miles away. Anthony had made several attempts to reconcile their ten-year marriage, Shiveron said, but she refused. The woman confessed that she had been physically abused on many occasions by Anthony. Recounting the horrifying events of Wednesday in front of the parlour she operated in Quarry Village, Shiveron said Anthony drove up to collect Ray Shawn around 2.45 pm. She had picked up the boy from school and Anthony would pass by and collect the boy to take him to his grandmother’s home.

Shiveron said on Wednesday, before driving off with Ray Shawn, he begged for reconciliation. “I told him ‘no’ and he drove off, but I see him driving with Ray Shawn up and down the street,” Shiveron said. The woman said Anthony pulled up in front of the parlour and again asked “that we make up.” When Anthony left with Ray Shawn, Shiveron said, she telephoned him twice on his cellular phone to enquire if he had dropped off Ray Shawn at her mother’s home. “The first time, he said: ‘Yuh will hold yuh head and bawl tonight.’” “The second time, he said, ‘I drop him home. He home in Heaven.’” A frantic Shiveron took a taxi to the Siparia Police Station where she filed a report.

Anthony had taken Ray Shawn to a lonely road in Quarry Village where he forced the child to drink the poison from a bottle. “My son said his father told him he will beat him if he did not drink the poison. He (Ray Shawn) told me he kept spitting out the poison and tried to run away,” Shiveron said. A group of villagers found Ray Shawn, still in his school pants and shirt, lying on the road and frothing from the mouth. The boy was a pupil of the Siparia Hindu School. An EHS ambulance rushed him to SFGH where he was warded in a critical condition. Two hours later, Anthony’s brother found him frothing from the mouth in his car on the same road the child was found.