GRANNY KILLED FOR $1,000

The woman’s bloodied body was found during the early morning hours on Thursday.

Police said that robbery appeared to be the motive as one thousand dollars, the elderly woman kept in a purse, was missing.

Her house was ransacked and there was evidence that an attempt was made to burn it down.

Grieving, shell-shocked relatives yesterday wondered aloud, what manner of person could beat an elderly woman until she is dead and then go home to sleep? Ali lived alone at Seecharan Trace, Farnum Village in Guaracara and sold flowers which she grew at her home to supplement her pension income.

Ali, a mother six and grandmother of six operated the plant and flower business at her humble, wooden home. She sometime stayed at her daughter’s home some miles away at Wellington Road in Debe but preferred to live alone so that she could tend to her flowers and also conduct business. She was last seen alive by relatives on Tuesday tending to her garden of anthuriums and other flowering plants.

A police report stated that at about 3.30 am on Thursday while Ali was asleep, bandits broke down the front door to the house.

Police believe they ransacked the three-bedroom house and took $1,000. It is believed that Ali ran out of the house in an attempt to escape as she held on to a cellular phone. As she ran in the yard, one of the intruders struck her with the concrete block causing the old woman to fall. What happened next, police said, was nothing short of absolute brutality.

The men used the concrete to bash in Ali’s head and chest until she stopped moving, her arms spread wide with one hand still clutching her cellular phone.

After committing murder, the killers left the bloodied concrete block on top of Ali’s chest. Police said an attempt was made to set fire to the house, perhaps to destroy evidence of the robbery, but it failed with the wooden walls of the kitchen room left scorched.

On Thursday, relatives in Debe began telephoning Ali but got no answer. They then contacted a neighbour and asked him to check on her. It was this person who discovered Ali’s stiff body in the yard surrounded by plants and flowers, with the concrete brick on her chest. Ali’s grandson Mark Baboolal, said that last month she held a prayer meeting at the very house where she met her death, to give thanks to God for granting her 74 years of life and blessing her with children and grandchildren.

“She was a perfect human being.

How could people hit an old woman with a brick on the head and go home to sleep comfortable in the night? She was always grateful to God for giving her life. My grandmother was a very nice and a quiet person,” the grandson said. The 24-year-old man believes his grandmother may have tried to fight with the bandits which infuriated them and caused them to bludgeon her in such a brutal manner.

Overcome with grief, Baboolal engraved the words “In loving memory Zorida Enayat Ali 19- 07-42 - 17-11-2016” on the back windscreen of his car. On the front windscreen, he engraved: “ R.I.P Mama. I love you.” An autopsy was expected to be performed yesterday at the Forensic Sciences Centre in St James, to confirm cause of death. Detective Cpl Bridgemohan of the Homicide Bureau, San Fernando, is spearheading investigations. No arrest has been made.