GIRL, 5, FATHER SHOT DEAD

Her father’s was found next to the bed.

The incident which has shocked the quiet community occurred sometime between Thursday night and early yesterday morning. The bodies were found at about 3.30 am at the family’s small wooden home at Leekham Road.

Saleesha, also called “Mama”, was a first-year pupil at the Caparo Roman School and lived with her mother 22-year-old Kernisha Bissoon — a casino worker who was on duty when the killings occurred.

Joseph, a labourer, lived at Mamoral Main Road # 2. Relatives said yesterday the couple shared an intermittent relationship and Joseph slept over “from time to time” at Bissoon’s home. Saleesha was the couple’s only child and she would have celebrated her sixth birthday on July 20.

Several residents, like relatives, expressed outrage over the killings especially that of the child who was described as “an innocent angel”.

Grandfather Peter Joseph, 61, said whoever killed his son and granddaughter were demons. “That is the Devil himself. How could you would watch a little child like that and kill her? That is a lil child, an angel. My son really loved her and that was the reason he went to sleep there because the mother went to work. It real heartbreaking (sic).” The child’s father was in the process of constructing his own house behind the one in which his parents live. He left home on Thursday evening telling his father that he will return yesterday morning.

Having dropped Bissoon off at her workplace at about 8 pm on Thursday, Joseph was expected to pick her up at about 3 am yesterday. But she, after calling him repeatedly and getting no response, contacted other relatives. Assuming Joseph was asleep, she told them to wake him.

But they called out several times, got no response, and decided to enter the house. It was then they encountered the death scene.

Peter said he received a telephone call at about 4am yesterday informing him that Joseph had been stabbed.

“When I reached, I saw him on the ground on his back, one foot up on the bed. I thought he was drunk but when I touched him he was cold. I saw blood marks on the belly and I say to myself that my son is dead.” At that time, Peter was unaware that Saleesha was not asleep but dead. “She was slightly turned.

Mama looked like if she was sleeping.

They (relatives) told police that the child sleeping. They were going to move her then recognised she was killed too. She probably saw the men, I assume that, so they killed her. She was a very intelligent child.” Peter was confident that his son put up a fight to save himself and his daughter. He said he has no idea why someone would want to kill Joseph and the child.

Residents told Newsday that they did not observe anything strange during the night. However, they heard tyres screeching sometime between 11pm and midnight.

“We did not hear any gunshots or screams,” said one resident. “Some fellas were liming out the road and saw two cars speeding off. They did not link it until daylight when we got the news. It real sad. This is normally a quiet area.” The family is still in mourning over the natural death of Saleesha’s maternal grandmother Maleza Sorillo, 38, last month. Sorillo was a mother of four and Saleesha was her only grandchild.

Caparo/Mamoral councillor John Lezama told Newsday he does not believe the double murder was drug related and extended condolences to the family. “It has more to be more than that,” Lezama said.

“We have had petty crimes in this area, but recently there had been some serious crimes. It may not have originated here in that people were killed elsewhere and their bodies dumped along the Caparo Valley Road.” To deal with the upsurge in crime in the normally peaceful community, Lezama said there were two police town meetings held at the Caparo RC School recently as well as a peace walk.