Two killed in seven hours

THE murder rate in TT has taken another leap by two, from 101 to 103 with the murder yesterday of a St Augustine woman and a Diego Martin man. Around 1 am Mala Rampersad, 27, was fatally stabbed while her common-law husband Basdeo Sinanan was also stabbed outside their Streatham Lodge, Extension Road, St Augustine home by a man who crashed into the couple’s wall destroying their dog kennel. Two hours later, security officer Gerald Maingot, 22, alias ‘Casa’ was asleep at his neighbour’s home at Wilson Street, Diego Martin when a loud explosion was heard.

The neighbour Akiela Pompey ran outside where she saw Maingot lying in a hammock bleeding from a gunshot wound to his head. She raised an alarm and was able to rush the bleeding man to the Port-of-Spain General Hospital. An emergency operation was performed on him but he died five hours later. In the first tragedy, according to police investigations, Rampersad and Sinanan, 47, were asleep when they heard a crashing sound at their gate. They were approached by a man who acknowledged he was the one who hit the wall with his car. The couple informed him that they were tenants and he would have to deal with the landlord. An argument started and the driver, 25, called a friend for help on his cell. The friend arrived on a bicycle and immediately got into an argument with the couple about fixing the wall and who they should speak to.

The angry friend walked back to the car and grabbed a knife and stabbed Sinanan and Rampersad before running off. Both collapsed on the ground. Sinanan was rushed to the Port-of-Spain General Hospital where he was operated on and warded, while the DMO pronounced the mother of one dead at the scene of the crime and ordered the body removed to the Forensic Sciences Centre for an autopsy on Monday. Police held the driver for questioning and impounded  the car at the Tunapuna police station. When Sunday Newsday visited the Pasea Road, Extension home of Phooliday Rampersad, the mother of Mala, the teary-eyed woman could not come to terms with the death. “That was the best child I have, why did he have to kill her?” A 19-year-old man of Macoya Settlement, Tunapuna has since been detained for the murder. Visiting the scene were ASP Hills, Inspectors Modeste and Abraham, Sgt Hamilton and Cpl Lucas.