Rad­hi­ca Sookraj

Every time he clos­es his eyes, the mem­o­ry of his moth­er be­ing stabbed to death con­tin­ues to haunt 11-year-old Seph Mitchell.In an in­ter­view yes­ter­day, Seph said every time he tried to sleep, he saw his moth­er's face. Al­though Seph has been brave­ly giv­ing graph­ic de­tails of what he saw to his friends and teach­ers, the young boy ad­mit­ted to hav­ing night­mares yes­ter­day. "Last night I did not sleep. When I closed my eyes, I saw my moth­er. We were hav­ing a hap­py time at Cau­ra Riv­er and then some­thing bad hap­pened," he re­called.

Sev­er­al close friends of Grant Memo­r­i­al Pri­ma­ry School vis­it­ed him and his broth­er, Saidan, 10, at their Fon­rose Street, San Fer­nan­do, home, bring­ing snacks. The chil­dren are ex­pect­ed to re­ceive coun­selling from of­fi­cers of the Min­istry of the Peo­ple, as well as from guid­ance coun­sel­lors of their school. Mean­while, the chil­dren's grand­fa­ther, Pas­tor Den­nis Lal­la, ques­tioned why no­body had both­ered to save Sab­ri­na-Lal­la Mitchell, who was bru­tal­ly slaugh­tered in front of a dozen wit­ness­es, in­clud­ing her two chil­dren, at Bavar­i­an Mo­tors, San Fer­nan­do, on Tues­day af­ter­noon. "Why didn't any­body save my daugh­ter?" Lal­la said, af­ter he wit­nessed the au­top­sy at the Foren­sic Sci­ence Cen­tre, Port-of-Spain.

The au­top­sy re­vealed that Lal­la-Mitchell was stabbed 20 times about the up­per body. She died from shock and haem­or­rhage con­sis­tent with mul­ti­ple wounds. The stabs punc­tured her left lung and ripped through her heart. The pathol­o­gist told Lal­la she died about 12 min­utes af­ter a main artery to her brain was sev­ered from her neck. Lal­la said he saw every stab wound which de­faced the body of his child. Say­ing he had for­giv­en the killer, Lal­la was dis­ap­point­ed no one had in­ter­vened dur­ing the scuf­fle. He said: "My daugh­ter put up a fight. While she was on the ground, she tried to brace and the knife cut her hand. Some­one could have tried to save her.

"On­ly her son, Seph, tried to help her but he is a lit­tle boy. What could he do? He could not do any­thing." He said the sus­pect re­mained un­der po­lice guard yes­ter­day and he was not giv­en the op­por­tu­ni­ty to speak with him. "I want­ed to tell him that I for­gave him and he should give his life to Christ," Lal­la said. He ex­plained that late yes­ter­day he got a text mes­sage say­ing the man had suc­cumbed to self-in­flict­ed stab wounds but po­lice lat­er said the sus­pect was still hos­pi­talised with a 50-50 chance of sur­vival. Mean­while, Bavar­i­an Mo­tors re­mained closed yes­ter­day. Po­lice said they have tak­en state­ments from sev­er­al em­ploy­ees.