Mom shot, kids killed
According to a police report, at about 1.20 am, three gunmen stormed the wooden one bedroom house and shot Geeta Singh, 20, and her nephew Richard Ramdial.
Singh who was shot twice, managed to escape by jumping through a window and ran through nearby bushes.
Ramdial, shot twice, was up to yesterday warded in critical condition at San Fernando General Hospital. Singh’s children — Sangeeta, six, and Sarah, four, who were asleep during the shooting, perished after the gunmen set the house on fire.
Singh’s common-law husband Ashook’s car, which was parked at the front of the house, was also doused with a flammable substance and set on fire.
Singh was taken to the Chaguanas Health Facility where she was treated and transferred to the Eric Williams Medical Sciences Complex in Mount Hope.
A police source said a suspect who was held subsequently escaped from the Chaguanas Police Station at about 3.30 am and up to late yesterday, a manhunt was launched by police.
Singh’s common-law husband who was not home at the time returned to see the house still on fire and was shot at by the gunmen who were still lurking in nearby bushes, forcing him to beat a hasty retreat.
Recalling the incident, Singh said she would be forever haunted by the screams of her dying children inside the burning house.
“Richard was screaming to me to go get the children out of the house.
“But I was already shot and the only thing I could have done was jump through the window to save my life. If I tried to go to the children, the gunmen would surely have killed me,” Singh said.
She then made a tearful plea for monetary assistance to bury her children saying her husband was a labourer and she is unemployed.
Police suspect a land dispute, going on for the past eight years, may be at the heart of the deadly attack.
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"Mom shot, kids killed"