The life­less body of the pro­pri­etor of Char­maine’s Bar and Mi­ni-Mart at Matu­ra was found at her home lo­cat­ed at To­co Main Road yes­ter­day morn­ing.

It is al­leged that Char­maine Shaffie was suf­fo­cat­ed. She was al­so robbed.

A mo­tive for her killing is yet to be de­ter­mined.

 Shaffie, 63, a moth­er of four, was found by her sis­ter, Sherene.

Sherene told Guardian Me­dia that she made sev­er­al calls to Shaffie, but all her calls went unan­swered. This aroused her sus­pi­cion and she de­cid­ed to go to her sis­ter’s house at Matu­ra.

On ar­rival at the house, she ob­served the back door on the north­ern side of the house open. She en­tered the premis­es and found sev­er­al pieces of Shaffie’s cloth­ing scat­tered on the floor. She called out to her sis­ter, but she nev­er re­spond­ed.  

She then went to the Matu­ra Po­lice Sta­tion where she lodged a re­port.

The death of the busi­ness­woman has left the vil­lage in mourn­ing and rel­a­tives in shock.

One rel­a­tive be­lieved that she was killed by some­one in the vil­lage.  

Her broth­er told Guardian Me­dia that she lives by her­self and runs her busi­ness.

“Every Sun­day af­ter church I will stop and chat with her, but this Sun­day I will be at­tend­ing a wake for my sis­ter in­stead of chat­ting with her,” he said.

Most of the vil­lagers said Shaffie was a qui­et and re­spectable per­son.

Pas­sen­gers trav­el­ling to the North East Coast ex­pressed shock at her mur­der.

Su­san Lakhan Bap­tiste, man­ag­ing di­rec­tor of Na­ture Seek­ers, said that she was a like­able per­son. On­ly last week, she said, vis­i­tors from Cana­da and the US who came to look at the tur­tles nest­ing were lim­ing at her bar. She said the vis­i­tors told her they were treat­ed very kind­ly and spoke very high­ly about her.

Sgt Hazel, PCs Ram­per­sad and Cara­bal­lo vis­it­ed the premis­es and ob­served the de­ceased ly­ing on her bed, lo­cat­ed on the south­east­ern side of the house.

She was wear­ing a night dress and her hands and feet were bound to­geth­er with blue ny­lon string.

The of­fi­cers al­so saw a blue and yel­low tow­el wrapped around her neck and a blue jeans and dark grey jack­et cov­er­ing her stom­ach area.

A red han­dle cut­lass was found ly­ing be­side her on the bed.

Po­lice said the premis­es are fit­ted with CCTV cam­eras how­ev­er, they were not func­tion­ing at the time.

The Dis­trict Med­ical Of­fi­cer viewed the body and or­dered its re­moval to the San­gre Grande Hos­pi­tal. A post mortem is ex­pect­ed to be done at the Foren­sic Sci­ence Cen­tre in St James.

Vis­it­ing the scene were Sen Supt Khan, Head East­ern Di­vi­sion, Ag In­sp Harp­er, Sgt Hazel,  PCs Ram­per­sad, Cara­bal­lo, Cpl James and oth­er of­fi­cers of Arou­ca Homi­cide Re­gion 11.

Of­fi­cers from Arou­ca Homi­cide Re­gion 11 are con­tin­u­ing the in­ves­ti­ga­tion.

Undertakers remove the body of businesswoman Charmaine Shaffie from her Matura home yesterday.

RALPH BANWARIE