Girl killed for $15 and sneakers

FOR $15, two bracelets and a pair of Nike sneakers, 18-year-old pan player Maria Greenidge was brutally murdered and her body dumped in a canefield road in Couva on Friday night. Greenidge was beaten about the body and her head bashed in, after playing pan for Joy Landers of Couva and attending the district’s annual Carnival Queen Show. Police investigators believe that the killer’s motive was robbery of the quiet and talented pan player. Greenidge left her Bacauro Trace, McBean Village, Couva home to play the second tenor with Joy Landers steelband Friday night in Couva where a number of Carnival fetes took place. Police investigators told Sunday Newsday that Greenidge and friends then attended the Couva Carnival Queen Show in the carpark, obliquely opposite the Couva Police Station.

Preliminary investigations revealed that Greenidge flagged down a taxi just in front the police station for home around midnight. Her home is situated about two and a half miles through the McBean stretch of canefield road. She never reached home to her parents  David and Patsy Greenidge. When Greenidge, who has a brother and two sisters whom she lived with, failed to show up home yesterday morning, her mother Patsy reported to Couva Police that her daughter was missing. A police report stated that around 11 am yesterday, a sugar cane worker stumbled upon Greenidge’s body on the bank of one of the drains separating the canefields at Camden, Couva, close to the heliport. Greenidge was fully clothed in a red jersey, a three-quarter blue denim pants, and white socks. Police said that a pair of gold bracelets and earrings she was wearing were missing. Her sneakers were also apparently stolen, police said. 

Detectives, who interviewed Greenidge’s two friends whom she was with at the Queen show, said $15 was stolen from the victim. The girl’s body bore a bloody “gash” at the back of the head. There were marks of violence on her hands and feet. Supt Federicks, Philbert, Sgt Loume and WPC Johnson visited the scene. Dr Bijah viewed the body and ordered its removal to the Forensic Sciences Centre. Greenidge was killed, the report said, approximately nine hours before which links the murder to have occurred around the time she boarded the taxi on her way home. The abduction and robbery of another woman in a separate incident an hour before Greenidge left the Queen show for home on Friday night, investigators said, points to the motive of the killers. The woman who boarded a taxi after the Queen show, was robbed and beaten. She sought medical attention at the Couva District Hospital and then reported the incident to the police.