Shane Su­perville

Se­nior Re­porter

shane.su­perville@guardian.co.tt

Al­most a month af­ter be­ing lured in­to an am­bush and doused with acid, 21-year-old hair­dress­er Jessie James says she still can­not find it in her heart to for­give the women who at­tacked her.

On Feb­ru­ary 26, James re­spond­ed to an ap­point­ment for a hair­styl­ist at a house near Brath­waite Lane, Bel­mont.

James trav­elled to the area, from the di­rec­tions giv­en by the “cus­tomer”, but was con­front­ed in a track by two women be­fore she could reach the house.

The women re­port­ed­ly ac­cused James of so­cial­is­ing with a man they knew and grabbed her cell­phone.

Speak­ing with Guardian Me­dia via tele­phone on Fri­day, James was asked if she could for­give her at­tack­ers. While she ex­pressed grat­i­tude for be­ing alive and re­cov­er­ing, she ad­mit­ted that she could not for­give the women.

“No be­cause I could have died in that sit­u­a­tion. I could have lost my eye­sight. I re­al­ly love my fam­i­ly... I love my fa­ther and I don’t know how they would have han­dled that.

“I’m past that point with them, be­cause so many things could have been done. She (the at­tack­er) nev­er had a con­ver­sa­tion with me. She wasn’t try­ing to be rea­son­able

“I could have died from what they did to me. I could have lost my eye­sight per­ma­nent­ly. She (one of the at­tack­ers) didn’t both­er to have a con­ver­sa­tion or any­thing with me. She wasn’t try­ing to be rea­son­able.”

The Mar­aval woman said she was de­pressed as she felt her life had “come to a halt” as she had to with­draw from a class she was en­rolled in.

James said she re­mem­bered be­ing ac­cost­ed by the women. When the acid was thrown on her face, she ini­tial­ly didn’t feel the burn­ing, but felt it af­ter a few sec­onds.

“The first thing that hit me was the scent. It smelled like one of those chem­i­cals my aunt us­es to clean the toi­lets. That’s when I re­alised it was acid. I couldn’t breathe prop­er­ly and start­ed to run away.”

James said a near­by res­i­dent come to her help and rinsed the acid out of her eyes be­fore tak­ing her to the hos­pi­tal.

She said she could not see out of both eyes for the first five days of her stay at the hos­pi­tal and feared the worst over the ex­tent of the dam­age to her face.

“I couldn’t see. All I could imag­ine was that my whole face was burnt off.

Through­out this whole thing I keep ask­ing ‘Why would she do this to me?’

I was won­der­ing if I would ever get to see again and if I couldn’t see, I didn’t want to be alive any­more.”

But de­spite these fears, James was even­tu­al­ly dis­charged.

She said while vi­sion out of her eyes was blur­ry, she is hope­ful that she can make a re­cov­ery, even as doc­tors are hes­i­tant to make a pre­dic­tion on her re­gain­ing full eye­sight.

Apart from the phys­i­cal wounds, James said the men­tal strain in the af­ter­math of the at­tack can be dif­fi­cult but she has sought com­fort from prayers and her fam­i­ly, who she said were sup­port­ive through­out the or­deal.

James al­so urged oth­er women not to take mat­ters in­to their own hands and con­front oth­er women over un­faith­ful­ness, not­ing the vi­o­lence “was not worth it.”

“Just leave if you’re not hap­py or get­ting what you want. Why would you want to be fight­ing for a man or fight­ing for love?”

One of­fi­cer in the Port-of-Spain Di­vi­sion said the in­ves­ti­ga­tion was be­ing “tak­en se­ri­ous­ly,” adding that while an ar­rest was ex­pect­ed to be made, he could not con­firm if any sus­pects were in cus­tody as of Fri­day af­ter­noon.

The of­fi­cer said the mat­ter was al­so be­ing treat­ed with care as one of the sus­pects was be­lieved to be a mi­nor.

Of­fi­cers of the Bel­mont CID are con­tin­u­ing in­ves­ti­ga­tions.