An­na-Lisa Paul

Se­nior Re­porter

an­na-lisa.paul@guardian.co.tt

“He is com­ing back to a tragedy that could send him mad.”

These were the words of one fire of­fi­cial at yes­ter­day’s dou­ble mur­der scene at Sev­enth Av­enue, Mal­ick, Barataria, as rel­a­tives of Rosan­na and Ele­na Ram­lal anx­ious­ly await­ed the ar­rival of pa­tri­arch Wes­ley Ram­lal.

The 46-year-old woman and her 17-year-old daugh­ter were al­leged­ly killed and set alight in the house af­ter lunch.

Wes­ley Ram­lal was re­port­ed to have gone hunt­ing in Rio Claro, and had to be tracked down by friends and rel­a­tives who on­ly in­formed him that a tragedy had oc­curred.

Ram­lal had not yet re­turned to the scene up to 7 pm yes­ter­day.

A close male rel­a­tive re­mained in po­lice cus­tody up to last night, as­sist­ing with en­quiries.

Fire of­fi­cials re­ceived a call around 2 pm that a house was on fire and smoke was seen com­ing from the un­fin­ished two-storey house.

As a ten­der from the San Juan Fire Sta­tion re­spond­ed and fire of­fi­cers rushed in­to the com­pound, they man­aged to ex­tin­guish the blaze.

How­ev­er, af­ter the smoke cleared and of­fi­cers be­gan search­ing the premis­es, they were hor­ri­fied to find the two bod­ies in­side.

They then alert­ed the Fire Ser­vices Crime Scene Unit and re­port­ed the dou­ble homi­cide to the T&T Po­lice Ser­vice (TTPS).

Un­able to say if the women had been killed be­fore be­ing set alight and if an ac­cel­er­ant had been used to start the blaze, fire of­fi­cials said they will re­turn to the scene this morn­ing, as they search for the cause and ori­gin con­tin­ues.

Rel­a­tives liv­ing close by de­clined to speak with re­porters, but open­ly wept as the charred bod­ies were re­moved by un­der­tak­ers.

Se­nior po­lice of­fi­cers re­mained at the scene last night, pro­vid­ing sup­port for the griev­ing fam­i­ly.

Snr Supt Claire Guy-Al­leyne de­scribed the in­ci­dent as “trag­ic” and ap­pealed to any­one with in­for­ma­tion to come for­ward and speak with of­fi­cers at the Mor­vant Po­lice Sta­tion.

Ex­tend­ing con­do­lences to the fam­i­ly and neigh­bour­hood, she as­sured them the in­ci­dent would be thor­ough­ly in­ves­ti­gat­ed.

Guy-Al­leyne was un­able to re­spond to claims that the male rel­a­tive, who was un­hurt dur­ing the fire, was a sub­stance abuser.

In­stead, she urged per­sons who may be suf­fer­ing from men­tal health is­sues to reach out to the po­lice and oth­er or­gan­i­sa­tions for help.

She said the TTPS was ready to of­fer coun­selling and re­fer­rals where nec­es­sary, for trou­bled per­sons to get help.