Sto­ries by

An­na-Lisa Paul

The fam­i­ly of mur­dered Fire Of­fi­cer Si­mone Ram­sa­roop on Wednes­day ad­mit­ted to be­ing baf­fled and con­fused as they strug­gled to di­gest the sud­den loss.

Ram­sa­roop, 47, of Row­land Av­enue, Trinci­ty, was last at­tached to the Ari­ma Fire Sta­tion. The moth­er of two girls was killed around 8.30 pm on Tues­day, af­ter four gun­men opened fire on her ve­hi­cle in San­gre Grande.

Ram­sa­roop, her com­mon-law hus­band Kur­land Thomas, 38, and Shyien Tran­coso, 23, of Coalmine, San­gre Grande, were on their way to at­tend a chris­ten­ing when they were am­bushed.

While Ram­sa­roop died be­hind the wheel, the oth­er two man­aged to flee the ve­hi­cle and were as­sist­ed by a res­i­dent who took them to hos­pi­tal. The two were said to be in crit­i­cal con­di­tion up to late Wednes­day.

Ac­cord­ing to re­ports, the trio were in Ram­sa­roop’s Nis­san Ver­sa head­ing to North East­ern Set­tle­ment, San­gre Grande, when up­on reach­ing Dudes Man Mi­ni Mart, four gun­men dressed in dark cloth­ing opened fire on the ve­hi­cle.

Cpl Ma­haraj and PCs Singh and Samuel, along with mem­bers of the East­ern Di­vi­sion Task Force un­der the su­per­vi­sion of Cpl Os­una re­spond­ed. They were told a firearm was seen pro­trud­ing from un­der Ram­sa­roop’s body which had slumped for­ward on the steer­ing wheel.

Foren­sic of­fi­cials lat­er re­cov­ered sev­er­al 5.56 mm and 9 mm spent shells, as well as a firearm in the ve­hi­cle.

Con­tact­ed yes­ter­day, Ram­sa­roop’s fa­ther, who is a re­tired Deputy Chief Fire Of­fi­cer, was too emo­tion­al to speak.

How­ev­er, a fe­male rel­a­tive de­scribed the mur­dered woman as some­one who was, “very at­ten­tive to her two chil­dren.”

Ad­mit­ting Ram­sa­roop was a very pri­vate per­son who sel­dom shared much in­for­ma­tion about what was go­ing on with her, the rel­a­tive agreed the killing was “un­for­tu­nate.”

She said the fun-lov­ing woman had dropped off her daugh­ter to stay with her par­ents but did not in­di­cate where she was head­ed. The woman con­clud­ed by in­di­cat­ing the fam­i­ly had more ques­tions than an­swers now.

This was the sec­ond time in just un­der two decades that the fam­i­ly has been forced to face tragedy.

Ram­sa­roop’s el­der sis­ter Michelle, who was al­so a fire of­fi­cer, died 27 years ago in the line of du­ty.