Mom of 5 gunned down

Relatives said that 54-year-old Cheryl Aberdeen Cooper said she had no chance whatsoever at surviving the attack as she was shot several times in the head and chest. Her husband, who was also shot, remains warded at hospital.

Cooper who worked in the Community-based Environmental Protection and Enhancement Programme (CEPEP) was seated in her husband Carl Edmund’s car at about seven o’clock yesterday morning in the yard of their home.

The couple was about to pull out of the yard in the vehicle when a man, clad in white, approached the left side of the car, pointed a gun at Cooper and fired repeatedly.

As she slumped in the seat, the gunman turned his gun on Edmund and shot him. The gunman then walked off.

A report was made to police and Edmund was taken to the San Fernando General Hospital where he underwent emergency surgery for gunshot wounds to his arm. Up to press time, the killer was still at large. Cooper’s body was viewed by a district medical officer who ordered it removed to the Forensic Science Centre for an autopsy. Relatives yesterday were in a state of shock as they struggled to process what had taken place.

“I learned about it from one of my sisters, who called me around 8 am and told me that they shot and killed her (Cooper).

We are all just struggling to come to terms with the loss.

She was a very loving, caring, hard-working person and did not deserve to leave this world in this manner,” said a relative who asked not to be identified. While police said they had no evidence that Cooper’s murder was as a result of the land dispute that is before the courts, her relatives insist that there is a link.

Relatives have also claimed that Cooper had received numerous threats in the weeks prior to her being killed yesterday.

Officers of the Marabella Police Station and detectives from the Southern Division Homicide Investigations Bureau are continuing investigations.