Shane Su­perville

Se­nior Re­porter

shane.su­perville@guardian.co.tt

As in­ves­ti­ga­tions con­tin­ue in­to the mur­ders of Rosan­na Ram­lal and her 17-year-old daugh­ter, Ali­na, de­tec­tives in the Re­gion II Homi­cide Bu­reau say they are con­sid­er­ing all pos­si­bil­i­ties. As of yes­ter­day, no ar­rests had been made and in­ves­ti­ga­tors had not es­tab­lished a mo­tive.

Ac­cord­ing to po­lice, a 20-year-old rel­a­tive was at the fam­i­ly’s Sev­enth Av­enue, Mal­ick, Barataria, home on Fri­day af­ter­noon when he heard a com­mo­tion com­ing from a room in the house.

When he went to in­ves­ti­gate, he re­port­ed­ly saw four masked ban­dits beat­ing the el­der Ram­lal and de­mand­ing mon­ey from her.

The ban­dits then turned their at­ten­tion to the male rel­a­tive, al­so de­mand­ing mon­ey from him be­fore beat­ing him.

Po­lice re­port­ed that both moth­er and daugh­ter were then shot and doused with methy­lat­ed spir­its and set on fire as the ban­dits ran away through an open back door.

The sur­viv­ing rel­a­tive was tak­en to the St Joseph En­hanced Health Fa­cil­i­ty where he was ex­am­ined.

In­ves­ti­ga­tors say he is not con­sid­ered to be a sus­pect in the in­ci­dent as of yes­ter­day, but his fin­ger­tips were swabbed for gun­pow­der residue as part of the in­ves­ti­ga­tion.

Guardian Me­dia vis­it­ed the Foren­sic Sci­ence Cen­tre, St James, and at­tempt­ed to speak to one of Ram­lal’s rel­a­tives, who said she was too dis­traught to com­ment on the mat­ter.

“I don’t have any prob­lem talk­ing about it. In­for­ma­tion will even­tu­al­ly come out and peo­ple will want to know what hap­pened but I can’t do that right now,” the rel­a­tive said.

Sources con­firmed that the au­top­sies on the bod­ies of both moth­er and daugh­ter were post­poned to Wednes­day, but did not pro­vide a rea­son for the de­lay.

When con­tact­ed for com­ment, San Juan/Barataria MP Sad­dam Ho­sein said that al­though Mal­ick falls with­in the Laven­tille East/Mor­vant con­stituen­cy, he con­demned the mur­ders.

“Our Gov­ern­ment is try­ing our best to en­sure that these in­ci­dents don’t hap­pen.

“It shows the need for tough law to deal with these mon­sters.”

Ho­sein de­clined to com­ment fur­ther, not­ing that the mat­ter was still un­der po­lice in­ves­ti­ga­tion.

He, how­ev­er, en­dorsed ef­forts to im­prove safe­ty and se­cu­ri­ty across Trinidad and To­ba­go.

Guardian Me­dia sought a re­sponse from MP for Laven­tille East/ Mor­vant Chris­t­ian Birch­wood but re­ceived no re­sponse up to press time.