Shas­tri Boodan

Free­lance Con­trib­u­tor

A fam­i­ly of five has been left home­less af­ter a fire, be­lieved to have been de­lib­er­ate­ly set, de­stroyed their home at Madras Road, Cunu­pia, on Tues­day, re­duc­ing near­ly all their be­long­ings to ash­es.

Can­dice Go­sine, 39, a dual cit­i­zen of Trinidad and To­ba­go and Unit­ed States, her fi­ancé and their three chil­dren es­caped in­jury but have been left with­out a place to live. The in­te­ri­or of the con­crete house was com­plete­ly gut­ted, leav­ing on­ly a small shed at the back of the prop­er­ty un­touched by the blaze.

Fight­ing back tears, Go­sine said the fam­i­ly may have no choice but to spend the night in the shed if emer­gency ac­com­mo­da­tion can­not be se­cured.

She is ap­peal­ing to mem­bers of the pub­lic for as­sis­tance with tem­po­rary hous­ing, food, cloth­ing, ap­pli­ances and build­ing ma­te­ri­als as the fam­i­ly at­tempts to re­build their lives.

“I have lost every­thing. It’s five of us—me, my fi­ancé and my three chil­dren. We are ba­si­cal­ly home­less,” Go­sine said.

Go­sine be­lieves the fire was in­ten­tion­al­ly set by a male rel­a­tive who, she claims, has been threat­en­ing her and her fam­i­ly since April.

She al­leged the rel­a­tive un­leashed a bar­rage of threat­en­ing phone calls and mes­sages from about 11 pm on Mon­day un­til 4.27 am on Tues­day, warn­ing that he would harm her, her fi­ancé and their chil­dren and burn down the fam­i­ly’s home.

Af­ter leav­ing for work on Tues­day morn­ing, Go­sine said she re­ceived a call from a neigh­bour in­form­ing her that the house was on fire.

“When we came, we no­ticed he did the same thing as pre­vi­ous times,” she al­leged. “He ripped out all the se­cu­ri­ty cam­eras, stole the DVR from the house, piled pa­pers on the bed and set the house on fire.”

The blaze de­stroyed fur­ni­ture, cloth­ing, ap­pli­ances and oth­er house­hold pos­ses­sions.

Sit­ting in the smoke-filled shed, with the lin­ger­ing smell of burnt plas­tic and tim­ber sur­round­ing her, Go­sine claimed she had re­peat­ed­ly sought po­lice as­sis­tance over the past sev­er­al months but re­ceived lit­tle help.

“I have been mak­ing nu­mer­ous re­ports to the po­lice, mul­ti­ple at­tempts for as­sis­tance and help in get­ting this man locked up,” she said. “He has been mak­ing mul­ti­ple threats to do this ex­act thing—burn down my house with me and my chil­dren.”

Go­sine said she made sev­er­al re­ports to the Cunu­pia and Las Lo­mas po­lice sta­tions, pro­vid­ing screen­shots of threat­en­ing mes­sages and records of phone calls.

She al­so al­leged that about three weeks ago the same man en­tered her prop­er­ty, held a knife to her throat and as­sault­ed her. Fol­low­ing that in­ci­dent, she said, she ob­tained a med­ical re­port and was grant­ed a pro­tec­tion or­der.

“I’ve been beg­ging and plead­ing with the po­lice for me and my chil­dren’s lives to be pro­tect­ed,” she said.

“I kept send­ing screen­shots, call­ing them at all hours when­ev­er this man showed up or kept con­tact­ing me, but noth­ing was done.”

She added, “I told the po­lice they were go­ing to wait un­til I be­came a sta­tis­tic, or un­til he did ex­act­ly what he said he was go­ing to do. Look where it has reached.”

Go­sine said the fam­i­ly now faces the daunt­ing task of start­ing over with vir­tu­al­ly noth­ing.

Any­one wish­ing to as­sist the fam­i­ly can con­tact Go­sine at 481-6479.

Ca­roni East MP Rishard Seecher­an, who vis­it­ed the fam­i­ly yes­ter­day, said the po­lice and Fire Ser­vice are in­ves­ti­gat­ing the cir­cum­stances sur­round­ing the fire, in­clud­ing Go­sine’s al­le­ga­tions that it was de­lib­er­ate­ly set.

Seecher­an added that he is li­ais­ing with the Min­istry of the Peo­ple and So­cial De­vel­op­ment to se­cure emer­gency as­sis­tance for Go­sine and her fam­i­ly.