GRIEVES TO DEATH

The 52-year-old woman was unable to overcome the grief over her son’s murder two weeks ago and stopped eating. She stopped trying to live. On Monday she collapsed, spitting up blood. She died later at hospital. Liverpool’s death was a double whammy for the family especially her daughter Asha Samlalsingh as they have not yet gotten over the murder of Liverpool’s son and Asha’s brother Keston ‘Pookie’ Jeffery, 23. Liverpool died on Monday at the Point Fortin Area Hospital.

A post mortem conducted yesterday at the mortuary of the San Fernando General Hospital revealed her death was due to a “saddle pulmonary embolism” - separation of the main artery of the lung.

Jeffery, a Private Hire (PH) driver was beaten and stabbed to death on October 3. Police investigators found his partially nude body in a drain at North Trace in Cap-de- Ville, on the outskirts of Point Fortin.

They believe that while plying his Nissan B14 car for hire, the killers hijacked and ordered him to drive to Cap-de-Ville where they committed the crime. Police found the car crashed on the roadside in a forested area. His money and a gold chain were also missing. Both Liverpool and her son lived with other relatives at Fortune Street, Egypt Village, Point Fortin. Liverpool, a janitor at a secondary school, was a mother of five and grandmother of four.

Speaking to Newsday yesterday, her daughter Asha Samlalsingh said that Jeffery’s death was too much for her mother to bear. “She literally grieved herself to death.

She kept crying non-stop since the incident. She was not eating or sleeping properly. The night before (Sunday night), she even told me to look after my two younger brothers and I kept telling her to not say such things. I told her to be strong like I was,” Samlalsingh recalled as she wiped away tears.

The grieving woman said her mother was in the process of planning a prayer service for Jeffery. At about 6 am on Monday, Liverpool had escorted her last child, Theon Liverpool, 12, to the roadside where he boarded a maxi-taxi to attend classes at the Cedros Secondary School. Samlalsingh also escorted her young brother. Minutes later, Liverpool and Samlalsingh returned home where Samlalsingh gave her mother a cup of tea.

At about 9 am on Monday, while seated at the side of the house, Liverpool began gasping for breath.

Relatives rushed her to the hospital where she later died. In between sobs, Samlalsingh told Newsday, “Mummy was not sick or anything.

It was grief. They (killers) took the life of my brother just like that and as a result have also taken my mother’s life. I have not even started to process that (the murder of Jeffery) yet and now this has happened. It is so hard right now I do not know what to do. I lost my brother and now this.” Police are yet to charge anyone for her son’s murder and investigations are continuing.