Sascha Wil­son

Se­nior Re­porter

sascha.wil­son@guardian.co.tt

A cou­ple was mur­dered while their 12-year-old daugh­ter was left fight­ing for her life af­ter be­ing shot in the head dur­ing a home in­va­sion yes­ter­day.

Death came knock­ing at the door of Asha George and De­von Dray­ton’s hum­ble Clax­ton Bay home short­ly af­ter mid­night.

In­ves­ti­ga­tors were last evening try­ing to de­ter­mine whether George, 30, or her boyfriend Dray­ton, 33, or both, were the in­tend­ed tar­gets.

While her 12-year-old daugh­ter was hit dur­ing the at­tack, George’s 14-year-old daugh­ter, who was al­so in the house, man­aged to sneak out un­de­tect­ed and was not in­jured.

The 12-year-old girl re­mains in a crit­i­cal con­di­tion at the San Fer­nan­do Gen­er­al Hos­pi­tal.

How­ev­er, those close to her ad­mit­ted yes­ter­day that vi­o­lence seemed to fol­low George.

Twen­ty-four years ago, George’s fa­ther, Er­ic George, who was Spe­cial Re­serve Po­lice­man, fa­tal­ly shot her moth­er and then turned the gun on him­self.

Five years ago, in June 2018, George’s then-boyfriend, Je­re­mi­ah Stephen, was shot dead in her par­ent’s house in Clax­ton Bay. She was not at home then. Two days lat­er, the house was de­stroyed in an ar­son at­tack.

Po­lice have not in­di­cat­ed whether Stephen’s mur­der is linked to yes­ter­day’s dou­ble mur­der.

Ini­tial re­ports stat­ed that the cou­ple and the two chil­dren were ly­ing on a mat­tress in a bed­room of the house lo­cat­ed at the end of a dirt road. There was a knock on the door and then two men en­tered.

The 14-year-old girl man­aged to es­cape through the door. She ran to a neigh­bour’s house and called the po­lice. The po­lice re­ceived the call around 12.18 am. When they ar­rived about ten min­utes lat­er, they saw the 12-year-old girl by the door, bleed­ing from a wound to her head and foot. Her hands were al­so bloody.

The of­fi­cers took her to a po­lice ve­hi­cle and drove her to the Cou­va Health Fa­cil­i­ty for treat­ment.

In a bed­room in the house, the po­lice found the blood-soaked bod­ies of the girls’ par­ents.

Dray­ton was ly­ing face down while George was ly­ing on her side. Both had sev­er­al gun­shot wounds about their bod­ies.

A dis­trict med­ical of­fi­cer viewed the bod­ies and they were sub­se­quent­ly trans­port­ed to a fu­ner­al home, pend­ing an au­top­sy at the Foren­sic Sci­ence Cen­tre in St James.

When Guardian Me­dia vis­it­ed the home yes­ter­day, the front door was pad­locked. The ply­board house ap­peared to be un­der ren­o­va­tion, but there was no elec­tric­i­ty con­nec­tion. No fam­i­ly mem­bers were present.

How­ev­er, Guardian Me­dia briefly in­ter­viewed her broth­er, Randy George. He said his sis­ter was un­em­ployed but was sup­posed to have gone to “check a job” at a se­cu­ri­ty firm on Mon­day.

He said every year they would cel­e­brate their birth­days to­geth­er, since they shared the same birth date on Sep­tem­ber 15.

How­ev­er, he was not con­fi­dent that her sis­ter’s killers will be brought to jus­tice.

“It have no jus­tice in Trinidad. They not go­ing to solve noth­ing,” he said.

Po­lice said George was ar­rest­ed pre­vi­ous­ly for drug-re­lat­ed of­fences.

Vis­it­ing the scene were of­fi­cers of the Cen­tral Di­vi­sion and Homi­cide Bu­reau of In­ves­ti­ga­tions Re­gion III. In­ves­ti­ga­tions are con­tin­u­ing.