Mark Bas­sant

Lead Ed­i­tor, In­ves­tiga­tive Desk

Alana Mo­hammed's dy­ing act was shield­ing her 13-year-old daugh­ter from a bar­rage of bul­lets that pierced the car they were sit­ting in on the morn­ing of Feb­ru­ary 13, 2020, at their En­ter­prise home in Ch­agua­nas.

"My daugh­ter said they were re­vers­ing, and they start­ed hear­ing shots, and her moth­er pushed her down un­der the seat or the dash­board. She (Alana) did not get to pro­tect her­self. She was pro­tect­ing her daugh­ter," re­called Alana's hus­band, Raphael Mo­hammed, who broke his si­lence on his wife's death for the first time when he spoke with Guardian Me­dia last week.

The gun­man, homi­cide in­ves­ti­ga­tors said, pumped at least 12 bul­lets in­to Alana's Toy­ota mo­tor­car as she at­tempt­ed to leave her home on that morn­ing short­ly af­ter six o'clock to drop her daugh­ter at school. The au­top­sy re­vealed she was shot at least four times, twice in the right shoul­der, once in the back, and the fa­tal bul­let rip­ping through her chest.

Her daugh­ter, now 15, was hit once in the low­er back but sur­vived.

Alana, 38, a house­wife, had grown ac­cus­tomed to the week­day rou­tine of drop­ping her daugh­ter at school.

Homi­cide in­ves­ti­ga­tors who pored over the case for two years be­fore it was of­fi­cial­ly de­clared a cold case re­cent­ly said that her killers care­ful­ly or­ches­trat­ed her every move and had been mon­i­tor­ing her for some time.

But on that morn­ing, ex­act­ly two years ago, it was dif­fer­ent.

Alana had on­ly mere hours be­fore re­turned from an eight-day trip in Mex­i­co with her hus­band as a Valen­tine's get­away.

"It is just a hand­ful of peo­ple who had known we left. Was this mis­tak­en iden­ti­ty? I don't know. I just found it strange. Who knew we just came back from the coun­try?" her baf­fled hus­band ques­tioned.

Homi­cide in­ves­ti­ga­tors fa­mil­iar with the case said that on that morn­ing at Dass Branch Trace in En­ter­prise, her killers were al­ready in po­si­tion less than two hun­dred feet away from her gate.

The in­ves­ti­ga­tors pieced to­geth­er the dra­mat­ic killing through CCTV footage tak­en from a cam­era over­look­ing Mo­hammed's dri­ve­way and a neigh­bour.

Guardian Me­dia, how­ev­er, saw the in­ci­dent from a dif­fer­ent van­tage point based on CCTV footage pro­vid­ed from a fur­ther dis­tance away–Alana was re­vers­ing her ve­hi­cle on­to the nar­row road­way, the gun­men quick­ly drove down the street in a White Nis­san Wingroad and blocked her.

A gun­man emerged and opened fire, hit­ting the back wind­screen of the car. Mo­hammed is seen tak­ing eva­sive ac­tion in the footage and step­ping on the gas ped­dle dri­ving back in­to her yard.

Based on the CCTV footage, in­ves­ti­ga­tors said it seemed that the gun­man's weapon was jammed. He ran quick­ly back to the car and in mere sec­onds sprint­ed in­to the yard and fired at point-blank range on the dri­ver's side, hit­ting Alana sev­er­al times.

As the gun­man ran out of the yard, Alana, who was still bare­ly alive, threw her car in re­verse and at­tempt­ed to hit the flee­ing gun­man. But she was un­suc­cess­ful and on­ly man­aged to strike an iron post across the street as the gun­man had al­ready got­ten in­to the es­cape car with his ac­com­plices who sped off.

The moth­er of one died min­utes lat­er in­side the car.

Awak­ing to a night­mare on Feb­ru­ary 13, 2020

Raphael Mo­hammed re­called the trag­ic day as if it hap­pened just yes­ter­day.

"She had left to drop my daugh­ter at school which she nor­mal­ly does every morn­ing. She will be up by 5:30 am and by six ready to drop her at school. I was awak­ened about 6:15-6:30 to bang­ing on my back door. I re­alise it was my neigh­bour. When I look through the win­dow he says, 'aye, your daugh­ter and Alana got shot'," said Mo­hammed.

The dis­traught hus­band said he had been feel­ing un­well while on the Co­pa Air­lines flight re­turn­ing home hours be­fore and when he got home he took some med­ica­tion and fell asleep on the couch.

When they had got­ten home just be­fore 1 am that day, Alana left to drop her moth­er and oth­er rel­a­tives just five min­utes away. They had been at her home look­ing af­ter her daugh­ter while she was abroad.

The last thing Mo­hammed re­mem­bered was his wife wak­ing him to go to bed short­ly be­fore 2 am when she re­turned from drop­ping her rel­a­tives off.

Some four hours lat­er he was awak­ened to a night­mare.

He was on­ly able to ful­ly com­pre­hend what had hap­pened when he was or­dered by the po­lice to take his daugh­ter to the Ch­agua­nas Health Cen­tre. His daugh­ter, though wound­ed, re­lat­ed to him what had hap­pened.

At the house where they once lived in Dass Branch Trace, where the tragedy oc­curred, there are still vi­su­al re­minders of the vi­o­lent at­tack. The fa­ther and daugh­ter have since moved to an­oth­er prop­er­ty.

The force of the au­to­mat­ic weapon and the 5.56 am­mu­ni­tion used in Alana's ex­e­cu­tion is still ev­i­dent in a wall of the com­pound more than 100 feet away from where the shoot­ing took place.

At least four bul­let holes two inch­es in depth lit­ter across the fad­ed or­ange paint­ed wall.

The de­spair of los­ing his wife with­out any fur­ther clues two years now has in­ten­si­fied Mo­hammed's men­tal tor­ture dai­ly.

"She nev­er told me look, babe, some­body had looked at me fun­ny when I went to the su­per­mar­ket, some­body was fol­low­ing me...Noth­ing, noth­ing of the sort, or that some­one had threat­ened her. We had no threats, no one ever called us on the phone and say we want a,b,c, or d, Noth­ing! Noth­ing!" said the griev­ing fa­ther and hus­band.

He dis­missed any sug­ges­tions her death was sent as a mes­sage for him. "If I had some­thing like that over my head why would my wife go out one o'clock in the morn­ing to drop her rel­a­tives by her­self? Why would my wife leave home by 6-6:15 am by her­self? We do not have se­cu­ri­ty. We lived freely."

Mo­hammed said in the ear­ly stages of the in­ves­ti­ga­tion in­to his wife's death homi­cide of­fi­cers had ques­tioned him as a per­son of in­ter­est. They had spo­ken to him at least three times, but com­mu­ni­ca­tion has dropped off over the last year.

They had al­so spo­ken to Alana's 20-year-old son from a pre­vi­ous mar­riage.

"The thing is for me, I told the of­fi­cer what­ev­er you have to do, do. I know in my heart, my heart is clean where this is con­cerned," he said.

Mo­hammed, who is a used-car deal­er and had on­ly a few years ago al­so be­come a li­cenced money­len­der, when ques­tioned about the al­le­ga­tions that his lat­ter busi­ness may have been a pos­si­ble cause for his wife's death, quick­ly dis­missed it.

"My busi­ness is ba­si­cal­ly op­er­at­ed through lawyers. I am not a money­len­der who would lend mon­ey off the streets. You would bring your doc­u­men­ta­tion to me and I will take it to my at­tor­ney. If my at­tor­ney ap­proves and says it is good, I would pro­ceed with busi­ness. I try my best not to do busi­ness off the streets with any shady char­ac­ters to start with. I do not ever leave room where my fam­i­ly is con­cerned to have risks. It is not worth it to me to do any­thing like that. Not once did I have a busi­ness or busi­ness deal that went sour or was un­re­solved. Nev­er!" he ex­plained.

"At the end of the day, I know that the po­lice are re­al­ly try­ing their best but like oth­er fam­i­lies we al­so need clo­sure and it's tough at times when you call and they tell you they can­not di­vulge any­thing be­cause the in­ves­ti­ga­tion is on­go­ing," said Mo­hammed.

'It's as though we are liv­ing in hell, all we want is clo­sure'

And while he still grap­ples with the need for clo­sure in his wife's death for both him­self and his daugh­ter, he is faced with the added re­spon­si­bil­i­ty of be­ing both par­ents to his teenage child.

With tears welling up in his eyes and his voice crack­ing he said, "You will nev­er know un­til this re­al­ly hit home, to know the sim­plest things like to go in­to the show­er and a tow­el is wait­ing for you... now be­ing a fa­ther and a moth­er it is very dif­fi­cult to do that, and what is even more dif­fi­cult is not hav­ing clo­sure.

"Why, why some­one could look at a 13-year-old and shoot her? It is dif­fi­cult to see your daugh­ter that was all jol­ly and hap­py...they use to call my daugh­ter 'Hug­gies' in school be­cause she al­ways hugged every­body. She wants to make you hap­py, but to see from that to now be­ing a dis­abled child, every sin­gle day it rips a part of you. "Los­ing your wife is one thing, but see­ing your daugh­ter like this it’s some­thing I can­not ex­plain to you, but not hav­ing clo­sure com­pounds it five times worse. If you find some clo­sure it makes it one per cent eas­i­er, but we can­not even have one per cent clo­sure on what hap­pened. What did Alana or my daugh­ter ever do to any­one? I have no an­swers to that and this is what I need," said a bro­ken Mo­hammed.

Mo­hammed rem­i­nisced on the good times they spent to­geth­er as he pe­rused his pho­to al­bums with pic­tures of his wife and daugh­ter. He said his daugh­ter has strug­gled men­tal­ly with her moth­er's death.

With a smile light­ing up his eyes, Mo­hammed re­called some of his wife's beau­ti­ful qual­i­ties: "Alana and my daugh­ter were not just daugh­ter and moth­er, they were best friends. Alana was one of those per­sons who would al­ways put you first and then her­self. She al­ways tried to be good. She is one of the most lov­ing and nicest peo­ple. If she is go­ing down the road and see some­one on the side of the road she will take out $20 and hand it to the per­son. Some­body will say you do not know what the man go do with the mon­ey, he could go and buy drugs. But she would say, you know what, I am giv­ing this with a good heart and what­ev­er he does with it that is his busi­ness."

Mo­hammed is hope­ful that he will get clo­sure on his wife's mur­der in the not too dis­tant fu­ture.

"It's as though we are liv­ing in hell, all we want is clo­sure. It is dif­fi­cult to lose a loved one and get no jus­tice. I do not know what to say where the jus­tice sys­tem is but some­thing bet­ter has to be done, and I am not the on­ly per­son go­ing through this. This break­down of hu­man be­ings when they have noth­ing to look for­ward to in our jus­tice sys­tem...I know how it feels to see crim­i­nals be­ing out there and we as tax­pay­ers just suf­fer­ing from no jus­tice and life just go­ing on. How do you put the right foot in front of the left foot?

On­ly yes­ter­day the re­ward for any­one with in­for­ma­tion lead­ing to the ar­rest and charg­ing of the sus­pect was raised from $100,000 to $200,000 by Crime Stop­pers.

Se­nior po­lice sources con­firmed to Guardian Me­dia that the case had now been clas­si­fied as a cold case and will be in­ves­ti­gat­ed by the TTPS Cold Case Unit.

Sources said work had al­ready be­gun on the case with the po­lice re­view­ing "solv­abil­i­ty fac­tors in the case" and "a foren­sic over­haul of the case" is al­so be­ing done.