Night­mar­ish scenes gripped 21-year-old Vishard Mo­hammed as he walked in­to his par­ents home on Thursday and found their de­com­pos­ing corpses on the floor of their liv­ing room.

Along­side the bod­ies of Shelly-Ann Ra­goo­nanan, 43 and Wazir Mo­hammed, 57, was the body of his un­cle 52-year-old Naz­im Mo­hammed.

Their bod­ies all bore gun­shot wounds.

The tragedy rocked the Clarke Road, Pe­nal com­mu­ni­ty and neigh­bours re­joiced that the mur­der­ers spared the lives of Vishard’s four-year-old sis­ter and eight-month-old broth­er who sat among the stench of rot­ting bod­ies that could be smelt from the road­way.

Their deaths were among five mur­ders Thurs­day, tak­ing the mur­der count to 339 for the year.

In Pe­tit Val­ley, Tim­o­thy Owen was shot dead. Ac­cord­ing to po­lice, around 10 am res­i­dents of School Street saw Owen ly­ing on the road­way bleed­ing from wounds to his head and chest. He died on the scene.

In Ari­ma, po­lice said around 4 pm rel­a­tives of Mofeed Baksh went to his home at Llanos Street in search of him and found him dead. His throat was slit.

Homi­cide de­tec­tives as­signed to the eerie mur­der mys­tery in Pe­nal be­lieved the vic­tims were killed since Sun­day.

What puz­zled them was that the chil­dren ap­peared to be well-fed and the ba­by’s di­a­per was mild­ly clean lead­ing to sus­pi­cions that the killer/s may be known to the fam­i­ly and had been in the house re­cent­ly.

Up to last night, the chil­dren were be­ing ex­am­ined by staff at the Siparia Dis­trict Health Fa­cil­i­ty and was ex­pect­ed to be re­leased in­to rel­a­tives’ care.

While no mo­tive was es­tab­lished for the Pe­nal mur­ders, in­ves­ti­ga­tors are prob­ing whether Wazir’s job as a scrap-iron and used truck parts deal­er had any­thing to do with it. How­ev­er, they said it did not ap­pear that there was a rob­bery.

Snr Supt Wayne Mo­hammed said that since Sun­day, Vishard, who lives in an­oth­er vil­lage in Pe­nal, was try­ing to con­tact his par­ents but there was no re­sponse.

De­cid­ing to check, he was met with a locked gate. He climbed over and saw a door to the house bro­ken. He then made the grue­some dis­cov­ery. Vishard took the chil­dren out of the house and con­tact­ed po­lice.

Rel­a­tives said the Mo­hammeds lived a reclu­sive life in their house on a hill, con­cealed by a canopy of trees. A gal­vanise fence bor­dered the prop­er­ty. A rel­a­tive said that Ra­goo­nanan was a qui­et per­son while Wazir hard­ly in­ter­act­ed with oth­ers.

Mo­hammed said that be­cause of the state of de­com­po­si­tion, it was dif­fi­cult to give the ex­tent of the in­juries. It is hoped that an au­top­sy sched­uled for to­day at the Foren­sic Sci­ence Cen­tre would pro­vide fur­ther ev­i­dence.

Ra­goo­nanan’s cousin, Wendy Seep­er­sad, who lives four miles away, said they rarely met with the fam­i­ly, on­ly on oc­ca­sions. Seep­er­sad said the last time she saw Ra­goo­nanan was back in May. She said she was not aware of any threats to her cousin’s life.

“We al­ways talk and things like that, but we on­ly see at fam­i­ly things…We live not far from here and it can hap­pen to any­one of us. I was re­al­ly shocked that it was my fam­i­ly. I live right on a main road just like her and any­body could jump in­to any­body’s house and do things to peo­ple. Al­though we have po­lice pa­trols that come in here off and on in the night, this is re­al­ly sad,” Seep­er­sad said.

While the mur­ders have left rel­a­tives trau­ma­tised and scared, Mo­hammed is ask­ing res­i­dents to be wary of their sur­round­ings and re­port sus­pi­cious peo­ple in their com­mu­ni­ty.

“All I will tell the pub­lic is to just be vig­i­lant and when you see strange peo­ple in the area, you need to re­port it, you need to let the po­lice know that strange peo­ple are in your area. What hap­pens some­times, these crim­i­nal el­e­ments have a way of net­work­ing by meet­ing one an­oth­er in jail and join­ing with the peo­ple in your vil­lage to com­mit crimes. I am not say­ing that this is the case in this in­stance,” Mo­hammed said.

South­ern Di­vi­sion Po­lice led by ACP Zamsheed Mo­hammed and of­fi­cers of the Homi­cide Bu­reau of In­ves­ti­ga­tions, Re­gion Three, in­clud­ing ASP Steve Seep­er­sad were among the of­fi­cers who re­spond­ed.