An­na-Lisa Paul

Se­nior Re­porter

an­na-lisa.paul@guardian.co.tt

The mur­der toll con­tin­ued to climb yes­ter­day, af­ter two women were killed in sep­a­rate in­ci­dents in Tacarigua and Arou­ca.

In the sec­ond in­ci­dent, a par­ty of North East­ern Di­vi­sion (NED) of­fi­cers rushed to the scene of a shoot­ing in which a preg­nant Venezue­lan woman was in­jured at Windy Hill, Arou­ca, by gun­men who were un­able to get to her com­mon-law hus­band.

The woman, who was lat­er iden­ti­fied as Anais Lopez, 31, of Mo­han Street, Pi­ar­co, was sev­en months preg­nant.

Lopez was lat­er pro­nounced dead on ar­rival at hos­pi­tal, while ef­forts by doc­tors to save the ba­by dur­ing surgery were al­so un­suc­cess­ful.

Re­ports in­di­cate that Lopez had ac­com­pa­nied her 25-year-old boyfriend to pick co­conuts at his grand­fa­ther’s gar­den in Windy Hill around 1 pm, when two armed men were seen run­ning to­wards him.

The boyfriend ran off in an at­tempt to es­cape the men. How­ev­er, when he re­turned lat­er on, he found Lopez ly­ing in a bloody pool. She had been shot mul­ti­ple times about the body.

The po­lice were alert­ed and af­ter they ar­rived, of­fi­cers took Lopez to the hos­pi­tal, when she was pro­nounced dead on ar­rival. Doc­tors al­so worked to save the ba­by but could not.

Two men were ar­rest­ed short­ly af­ter the at­tack and were said to be as­sist­ing po­lice with the in­ves­ti­ga­tion.

Se­nior of­fi­cers at the scene in­clud­ed ASPs Bharath and Pierre, along with W/In­sp Nar­cis, as well as of­fi­cers from the Homi­cide De­part­ment, in­clud­ing W/Sgt Rivers and PC Mc Queen.

In the first in­ci­dent around noon, the mu­ti­lat­ed body of an uniden­ti­fied fe­male was found un­der a bridge near the Ed­die Hart Recre­ation Ground in Tacarigua.

A pass­er-by spot­ted the body ly­ing on a piece of dis­card­ed sponge, which was on a con­crete em­bank­ment just off the Pri­or­i­ty Bus Route.

The po­lice were alert­ed and re­spond­ed. In­ves­ti­ga­tors ini­tial­ly be­lieved the body was that of a man, as the vic­tim was said to have been of slim build with very short hair.

Up­on clos­er in­spec­tion af­ter ar­riv­ing at the scene, how­ev­er, of­fi­cers dis­cov­ered it was a fe­male and she bore punc­ture wounds to the chest.

The Dis­trict Med­ical Of­fi­cer vis­it­ed the scene and or­dered the body re­moved to the Foren­sic Sci­ence Cen­tre, St James.

When Guardian Me­dia vis­it­ed the area, the blood-stained sponge, along with sev­er­al ar­ti­cles of cloth­ing, was seen strewn un­der the bridge.

The mur­der toll for the year stood at 26 up to yes­ter­day evening.