5 murders in 10 hours

This was how relatives described the execution-styled murders of a man and his common-law wife who were shot in their heads as they slept on a bed in their Guapo home during the early morning hours yesterday. The victims, Luenda Anthony, 29, a mother of one and Rickey Mohammed, 40, a father of three, were shot once and twice to the head respectively as they lay side by side on their bed in their Limefield Road, Cochrane Village home.

The couple was among five persons murdered between Monday and yesterday, in a 12-hour span, which sent the country’s murder toll to 27 in the first 17 days of this year. Anthony was a security officer.

No motive for the murders has been established although investigators told Newsday that the victims were embroiled in a land dispute with a woman.

Police said that at one o’clock yesterday morning, gunshots were heard inside the couple’s house.

Anthony’s mother Nicole Anthony, 45, who lives nearby heard the shots and ran to her daughter’s house to investigate. On seeing the bodies of her daughter and son-in-law covered in blood on the bed, Anthony screamed, causing other neighbours to come running to see what had happened.

“When I heard the gunshots, I ran to their house and called out to my daughter. I said, ‘Lu Lu’ just before I entered the bedroom. When I saw her soaked in blood next to her husband who was bleeding from the head, I almost collapsed,” Anthony said. Her daughter appeared to be dead, the anguished woman related, while husband Mohammed groaned and said to call an ambulance.

“Those were his final words.

He stopped moving and did not say anything else,” Anthony said.

A report was made to the police and officers who arrived on the scene and cordoned off the house, later found a bag of marijuana in the roadway. It is believed that in their haste to get away, the killers dropped the bag of marijuana.

Saying that a person has to be possessed by the Devil to go into another person’s house and commit murder, Anthony cried that her daughter and son-in-law did not deserve such a violent end.

“My daughter worked hard Monday to Friday as a security officer and on Saturdays she worked at KFC. She worked hard to provide for her family. She did not deserve this. Whoever did this is not human.

This was a demonic act,” she cried. The couple lived together for just over a year. Another occupant of the house, Luenda’s nine-yearold daughter Christina was at the time, spending the night at her grandmother’s home. Mohammed worked part time as a labourer in the Pt Fortin Borough. Up to press time, no arrest had been made and investigations are continuing.