An­na-Lisa Paul

Se­nior Re­porter

an­na-lisa.paul@guardian.co.tt

The moth­er of the woman who was found mur­dered in an aban­doned house in Curepe on Sat­ur­day, is ap­peal­ing to the po­lice to en­sure her daugh­ter re­ceives the jus­tice she de­serves.

While Rose­marie Roopc­hand ap­peared com­posed and strong as she wait­ed to iden­ti­fy Alana De Leon’s body at the Foren­sic Sci­ence Cen­tre, St James, yes­ter­day, she ad­mit­ted the killing had hit the fam­i­ly hard.

De Leon, 30, of Bangladesh Vil­lage, St Joseph, was found dead at the par­tial­ly burnt and aban­doned two-storey house at Mc Don­nell Street, Curepe, at 8 am.

Of­fi­cers of the St Joseph Po­lice Sta­tion were alert­ed by an off-du­ty of­fi­cer that a woman’s body was found on a mat­tress in one of the bed­rooms.

The par­tial­ly nude vic­tim was found with a knife stuck in the right side of her neck and a brown cloth cov­er­ing her face.

An au­top­sy yes­ter­day list­ed the cause of death as mul­ti­ple stab wounds to the head and up­per eye­lids.

Say­ing De Leon had left her home and moved to St Joseph a while back, Roopc­hand de­scribed her daugh­ter as, “a very out­go­ing per­son.”

She added, “She was nice, she nev­er had a prob­lem with no­body. She was lov­ing.”

A male rel­a­tive, who asked not to be named, said De Leon was very so­cial and, “liked to lime and par­ty. She just liked to have fun, any­thing to do with hav­ing fun, she there.”

Asked to say what her daugh­ter would have been do­ing at the house where she was killed, Roopc­hand spec­u­lat­ed that she may have been in the com­pa­ny of friends, or at least with some­one she knew and trust­ed quite well.

Re­call­ing her daugh­ter’s in­ter­est in hair and nails, Roopc­hand touched her own pony­tail as she laughed and re­vealed, “My hair was the man­nequin for her.”

She said De Leon would of­ten prac­tice on her as well as one of her cousins.

“Al­ways try­ing to plait some­body hair.”

Roopc­hand said the way in which her daugh­ter had been killed was, “very hurt­ful be­cause I wasn’t look­ing for she to go in that way.”

She con­tin­ued, “All I pray­ing for is jus­tice, that who­ev­er did this to her, that they will get ketch and we will get jus­tice.”

Roopc­hand last saw De Leon at her step-fa­ther’s house a few weeks back, and the two joked about the cloth­ing she still had to col­lect from Roopc­hand’s house.

“The last thing she did was laugh and said mum­my, love you...she used to tell me this all the time,” Roopc­hand cried.

Along with the knife that was found lodged in De Leon’s neck, in­ves­ti­ga­tors col­lect­ed sev­er­al ar­ti­cles of cloth­ing; a sec­ond knife; a bed sheet; one con­dom pack; and an emp­ty cig­a­rette box at the scene.