Sascha Wil­son

Af­ter a vi­o­lent en­counter with her for­mer close friend, moth­er of five Adan­na Dick was on her way to the po­lice sta­tion to make a re­port, but she nev­er made it.

Dick, 36, was stabbed to death at a bus shed not far away from her St Mar­garets home on Tues­day night.

Rel­a­tives said she had suf­fered years of do­mes­tic abuse.

Po­lice are search­ing for a 47-year-old sus­pect.

Around 10 pm po­lice re­spond­ed to a re­port about screams com­ing from a bus shed along the South­ern Main Road which is op­po­site the street where she lived with her chil­dren.

Po­lice found Dick ly­ing at the back of the shed with blood on her left side. Clasped in her hands was a rusty eight-inch knife which po­lice be­lieve could be the mur­der weapon.

This is the sec­ond woman in a month to have been killed al­leged­ly due to do­mes­tic vi­o­lence. On June 9, Tri­cia Ram­saran, 37, was stran­gled al­leged­ly by her com­mon-law hus­band at his Sukhan Trace, Bar­rack­pore home.

At Dick’s home yes­ter­day, her moth­er was too dis­traught to speak with Guardian Me­dia. How­ev­er, Dick’s step­daugh­ter Camille Thomas, 22, said she had bro­ken off the re­la­tion­ship a few months ago. Dick, a sales clerk at a busi­ness place in Care­nage, re­turned home to find the sus­pect there. Thomas said she was at the hos­pi­tal when Dick called her around 8.30 pm.

“I was in the hos­pi­tal she call me and told me she and he had a dis­agree­ment and she say she was go­ing by the sta­tion. I was hear­ing him ar­gu­ing in the back­ground. Where I was in the hos­pi­tal I could not talk to her so I told her I will call her back.”

How­ev­er, Thomas said she could nei­ther reach Dick nor the man on their cell­phones when she left the hos­pi­tal.

While on her way to her home in Clax­ton Bay she saw the po­lice and am­bu­lance as well as a cau­tion tape at the bus shed. “I be­lieve it was her be­cause that was the in­stincts I was get­ting when I come up the road.” When she got home, she called the St Mar­garets Po­lice Sta­tion to in­quire whether there were any re­ports re­gard­ing Dick or the sus­pect. There was no re­port, but she said the po­lice asked her sev­er­al ques­tions. Thomas said her step­mom was afraid of the sus­pect and had com­plained that he was al­ways ha­rass­ing her.

She did not know whether Dick made any re­ports to the po­lice against him. She said Dick was as­sault­ed on sev­er­al oc­ca­sions and she once suf­fered a bro­ken arm. “She just want­ed to get out and be hap­py and com­fort­able. I nev­er thought she would have been killed,” said Thomas who shared a very close re­la­tion­ship with her step­mom. Dick’s chil­dren are be­tween the ages of 14 and two-years-old. She de­scribed Dick as a very lov­ing and car­ing per­son. Vis­it­ing the scene were Supt Ram­phal, Ag In­sp Jag­ger­nath, Cpl Bood­lal, Cpl Bridge­mo­han, PC Bernard, PC Deena and WPC Per­sad of the Pe­nal CID and Homi­cide Bu­reau Re­gion 3.

The In­ter­na­tion­al Women’s Re­source Net­work (IWRN) again ap­pealed with women in abu­sive sit­u­a­tions to stop be­ing afraid of their at­tack­ers and seek help. In a re­lease fol­low­ing the mur­der of Adan­na Dick, IWRN stat­ed, “The IWRN con­tin­ues to plead with women and fam­i­lies to be­come more se­ri­ous in treat­ing with all in­ci­dents of do­mes­tic abuse and to al­so re­veal full de­tails of the abuse, as in­ci­dents can on­ly be prop­er­ly ad­dressed with com­plete dis­clo­sure. Both abused vic­tims and fam­i­ly mem­bers must be­gin to view all types of abuse as se­ri­ous in­clud­ing emo­tion­al, fi­nan­cial or phys­i­cal; the or­ga­ni­za­tion be­moans that with­out ap­pro­pri­ate in­ter­ven­tions and as­sis­tance, any type of do­mes­tic abuse would be­come worse par­tic­u­lar­ly if the root cause(s) are ig­nored and not ad­dressed in a time­ly man­ner.”