Jensen La Vende

The qui­et com­mu­ni­ty of Be­dasie Street, St Au­gus­tine, was thrown in­to a state of shock yes­ter­day with the dis­cov­ery of the bod­ies of San­jeev Ram­baran and his ex-wife Di­an Paladee.Paladee, 49, was an heir to the Pen­ny­wise chain of cos­met­ic stores, which was found­ed by her fa­ther Lall Paladee, who died in 2009. She was a teacher at the El Do­ra­do South Hin­du School. The es­tranged cou­ple was found at Ram­baran's home around 4.30 am yes­ter­day, bring­ing a grue­some end to a fran­tic five-hour search for Paladee.Paladee was found in her ex-hus­band's bed­room on his bed, hav­ing been shot once in the head, her ex-hus­band lay a few feet away. Af­ter killing Paladee he turned the gun on him­self.Po­lice found a rolling pin be­tween the two bod­ies and she ap­peared to have been beat­en.

An au­top­sy per­formed on Paladee yes­ter­day at the Foren­sic Sci­ence Cen­tre, St James, showed that she had been hand­cuffed, mouth duct-taped and shot in the head with a shot­gun. The cause of death was a sin­gle gun­shot to the head.Ram­baran is said to have then placed the shot­gun in his mouth and us­ing a crow­bar pulled the trig­ger. As a re­sult of the shot­gun blast his head was blown off and he had to be pos­i­tive­ly iden­ti­fied via his se­r­i­al num­ber for his pace­mak­er.Paladee's broth­er Sat­nar­ine con­tact­ed the An­ti-Kid­nap­ping Squad around 11 pm on Wednes­day when she failed to show up at her home at Prashan­ti Dri­ve, Or­chard Gar­dens, Ch­agua­nas, and at a func­tion she was sched­uled to at­tend ear­li­er that night.In 2005, Paladee's broth­er Dane was kid­napped out­side his Mo­hammed Road, Tu­na­puna, home. He was re­leased on Au­gust 30, six days lat­er. His kid­nap­per de­mand­ed a $3 mil­lion ran­som and he was re­leased af­ter part of the mon­ey was paid.Po­lice said Paladee's rel­a­tives tried con­tact­ing both her and Ram­baran but nei­ther an­swered their cell­phones. The rel­a­tives went to Ram­baran's home, saw Paladee's car parked in the dri­ve­way and con­tact­ed AKS, who broke in and found the two on the floor.

Ram­baran, 44, a man­ag­er at Carib Brew­ery, was de­scribed as nice per­son by neigh­bours who said they nev­er sus­pect­ed he could com­mit such an act. Neigh­bours told the me­dia yes­ter­day that Paladee would reg­u­lar­ly vis­it her ex-hus­band, as the two had an am­i­ca­ble re­la­tion­ship. They added that Paladee would vis­it and help Ram­baran clean his apart­ment.Land­la­dy Ang­ie Sookhoo, who gave the mem­bers of the AKS a key to en­ter the home de­scribed them as "love­ly peo­ple."She said the mur­der/sui­cide has shocked the com­mu­ni­ty, which had nev­er ex­pe­ri­enced any­thing like this in the past. Sookhoo won­dered if the coun­try was a liv­ing hell, con­sid­er­ing the amount of blood­shed for the year so far.The mur­der/sui­cide of Paladee and Ram­baran is the sec­ond for 2014. Last Sat­ur­day Shas­tri Roop­nar­ine, 24, shot and killed his girl­friend Aman­da Per­sad, 22, be­fore putting the gun to his head and pulling the trig­ger.