Sascha Wil­son

Se­nior Re­porter

sascha.wil­son@guardian.co.tt

An au­top­sy on Sco­tia­bank em­ploy­ee Giselle Pe­ters con­firmed she was stabbed sev­er­al times dur­ing an at­tack by ban­dits who stormed her prop­er­ty over the week­end. The au­top­sy was con­duct­ed at the Foren­sic Sci­ence Cen­tre in St James.

Pe­ters had gone to Phase 2 of the Re­form Res­i­den­tial De­vel­op­ment in Gas­par­il­lo on Sat­ur­day to check the progress of con­struc­tion on her two-storey home.

Her screams al­tered the neigh­bours around 11.35 am, and the sus­pects were seen flee­ing the house. As they en­tered a ma­roon ve­hi­cle, one of them was heard shout­ing, “Dri­ve, Dri­ve, Dri­ve.”

Pe­ters was found “beat­ing up” on the floor with a knife stuck in her neck. She died be­fore the am­bu­lance and po­lice got to the scene. The as­sailants stole her bag.

The moth­er of two girls, aged six and nine, had planned to com­plete and move in­to her home by Christ­mas.

Fol­low­ing her mur­der, the bank’s High Street, San Fer­nan­do branch re­mained closed yes­ter­day.

A no­tice on the branch’s door stat­ed, “We deeply ap­pre­ci­ate your un­der­stand­ing as we sup­port our staff at this time. The High Street branch will be closed to­day and re­open to­mor­row Tues­day 30th Ju­ly, 2024.”

Pe­ters, 38, worked at Sco­tia­bank as a pre­mi­um re­la­tion­ship of­fi­cer for many years, dur­ing which time she re­ceived sev­er­al awards.

Ex­press­ing con­do­lences to the fam­i­ly, Na­pari­ma MP Rod­ney Charles said res­i­dents from the Re­form Vil­lage area and en­vi­rons had meet­ings with the po­lice and have set up neigh­bour­hood watch groups, but he said that was not enough to keep them safe. “This is just an­oth­er dai­ly man­i­fes­ta­tion of a sad phe­nom­e­non where cit­i­zens live in fear of be­ing ran­dom­ly mur­dered by ban­dits with im­puni­ty and seem­ing­ly with­out re­morse or fear of be­ing caught,” he said.

Charles called on Gov­ern­ment and po­lice to make a greater ef­fort to in­crease the de­tec­tion rate.

“Every time a crim­i­nal com­mits a mur­der and is not caught, he or she feels em­bold­ened to com­mit oth­er crimes. The TTPS has to in­crease con­vic­tion rates or cra­paud smoke we pipe.”

Mean­while, Pe­ters’ rel­a­tives are yet to fi­nalise fu­ner­al arrange­ments.

Up to last evening, the po­lice had not yet iden­ti­fied or ar­rest­ed any sus­pects in con­nec­tion with her mur­der. Of­fi­cers of the Homi­cide Bu­reau Re­gion Three are in­ves­ti­gat­ing.