An­na-Lisa Paul

Two sis­ters were killed ear­ly yes­ter­day af­ter in­trud­ers broke in­to their home in Cara­po, Ari­ma, be­fore dous­ing the house with gaso­line and set­ting it alight. The dead women have been iden­ti­fied as Kim, 34, and Sal­isha Grif­fith, 29. Their deaths brought the mur­der toll to 188 for the year. Sal­isha, a moth­er of three-aged ten, sev­en and six-cel­e­brat­ed her birth­day one week ago. Around 3.55 am yes­ter­day, neigh­bours of the sis­ters alert­ed of­fi­cers at the Ari­ma Po­lice Sta­tion about screams heard com­ing from the house at Pas­cal Lane, Faith Av­enue. Res­i­dents al­so iden­ti­fied a 24-year-old sus­pect, of Jokhan Trace, who was seen run­ning away from the burn­ing struc­ture. Al­though fire of­fi­cers were called to the scene, they were un­able to save the women.

The wood­en house was com­plete­ly de­stroyed and the sis­ters' charred re­mains were viewed by the Dis­trict Med­ical Of­fi­cer and or­dered re­moved to the Foren­sic Sci­ence Cen­tre, St James. Speak­ing with the T&T Guardian at the cen­tre, the broth­er of the mur­dered women, Melvin Grif­fith, com­mend­ed the po­lice for their quick work in ap­pre­hend­ing two sus­pects, just hours af­ter the or­deal. Cry­ing as he de­scribed his sis­ters, Melvin said Kim op­er­at­ed a dry goods busi­ness in a sep­a­rate struc­ture at the front of the house and al­so plant­ed veg­eta­bles which she sold in the com­mu­ni­ty. Sal­isha, he said, was "qui­et and kept main­ly to her­self." Grif­fith said Sal­isha's chil­dren were spared the same fate as their moth­er and aunt, be­cause she had tak­en them to spend some­time with their fa­ther on Sun­day. The chil­dren were due to re­turn home to­day. He said an­oth­er broth­er dropped off Sal­isha around 10 pm on Sun­day and spent two hours with the women be­fore leav­ing around mid­night. She was em­ployed with Bet­ter Homes, El So­cor­ro, and was study­ing at the Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies to be­come a pre-school teacher.

Grif­fith said the fam­i­ly learned of the tragedy af­ter a neigh­bour con­tact­ed his aunt about the fire.

Of­fer­ing a pos­si­ble mo­tive for the dou­ble-mur­der, Melvin said Kim was in­volved in an al­ter­ca­tion some­time ago with a man from the area whom she had re­fused cred­it at her busi­ness place. He said sub­se­quent to the in­ci­dent, the man had threat­ened "to burn down the busi­ness." Au­top­sies on both women yes­ter­day re­vealed they did not per­ish in the fire but were killed be­fore the fire con­sumed the build­ing. Foren­sic pathol­o­gist Dr Valery Alexan­drov said the women bled to death af­ter their throats were slashed. He said there was no ev­i­dence of soot or car­bon monox­ide poi­son­ing in their lungs to in­di­cate they were alive when the house was set ablaze. Un­able to say if the women were sex­u­al­ly as­sault­ed pri­or to be­ing killed, Alexan­drov said swabs of their vagi­nal and anal cav­i­ties were tak­en for test­ing.