Ani­ka Gumbs-San­di­ford

In the form of a "voodoo" pack­age, the twin sis­ter of mur­dered Nigel Allen yes­ter­day re­ceived a death threat while on her job at the Mon Re­pos RC School. Ad­dressed to Ms Allen, the wrapped wood­en box con­tain­ing a doll and par­ti­cles of dirt, was placed in three plas­tic bags with a sym­pa­thy card with the words: "You are your broth­er's keep­er. The wages of sin is death. Time to meet your broth­er N.Y.O."

Po­lice be­lieve the ar­ti­cles sent a mes­sage of "obeah" be­ing per­formed. They be­lieve the dirt was from a ceme­tery.

This was the sec­ond "mes­sage" to be sent to the fam­i­ly since Allen was mur­dered in 2005. Allen was found buried in a shal­low grave 13 days af­ter he went miss­ing from his home in Clax­ton Bay on De­cem­ber 7. On Box­ing Day, Allen's grave at Roodal Ceme­tery, San Fer­nan­do, was paint­ed in black. Ac­cord­ing to po­lice, a young man de­liv­ered the pack­age to the school around 6.15 pm on Thurs­day. The pack­age was col­lect­ed by a fe­male se­cu­ri­ty guard on du­ty. Yes­ter­day, Allen's twin sis­ter Na­tal­lie, re­ceived the pack­age when she turned up for work at the com­put­er lab. Sus­pi­cious of the de­liv­ery af­ter see­ing the sym­pa­thy card, Na­tal­lie re­fused to open the pack­age and in­stead re­port­ed the mat­ter to the Mon Re­pos Po­lice Sta­tion.

Pupils were quick­ly evac­u­at­ed and class­es were re­lo­cat­ed to the near­by Mon Re­pos RC Church. Teach­ers were al­so in­struct­ed by po­lice of­fi­cers of the Bomb Squad to re­move their ve­hi­cles from the school's com­pound. Con­soled by her el­der sis­ter Geral­dine, al­so a teacher at the school, Na­tal­lie cried: "I thought it had some­thing to do with my broth­er be­cause of the re­cent paint­ing of his grave...I did not think it was death threat." Geral­dine said she sus­pect­ed that the pack­age may have been linked to a court mat­ter last month. As po­lice were broght in­to the room to sniff the pack­age, Geral­dine and Na­tal­lie stared in a daze.

When the dogs did not raise an alarm, the of­fi­cers en­tered the com­put­er lab and a chair was placed over the pack­age on the ground be­fore the box was blown apart by the of­fi­cers. The loud ex­plo­sion brought parish priest Fr Pe­ter De La Bastide, neigh­bours, pupils and teach­ers out­side, won­der­ing what had hap­pened. The head and limbs of a doll were blown apart and pitched in dif­fer­ent cor­ners of the room. Un­able to con­trol her emo­tions, Na­tal­lie cried: "My broth­er plead­ed for his life and they did not lis­ten, but we are a pray­ing fam­i­ly and we would get through this. "We prayed for 13 days when Nigel was miss­ing un­til we found his body, and we will con­tin­ue to pray to over­come this," she said.