Trinidad: Children rescued from house with three corpses were blood-soaked and starving
(Trinidad Guardian) The two children found in their Penal home with three corpses on Thursday were blood-soaked and starving, according to their grandfather Dipraj Ragoonanan.
Ragoonanan’s comment contradicted that of the police first responders, who claimed the children appeared to be wellfed and clean when they were rescued.
Speaking with Guardian Media at the Forensic Science Centre yesterday, Dipraj, 72 said he cried uncontrollably when he saw the children.
He said the two children, an eightmonth-old baby boy and a three-year-old girl, were starving and dehydrated.
“They were given IV fluids at the San Fernando General Hospital...we left there late [Thursday night] because they were seeing about them.”
“The little girl does call me Nana and she told me ‘Nana, Nana I trying to wake up mummy for tea but she not waking up’...my heart broke...I start to cry. If you see them state...the clothes mess up with blood and stuff...their hands and faces,” Dipraj said.
Dipraj, who is still waiting for the autopsies to be done on the bodies of his daughter Shelly-Ann Ragoonanan, 43, and her husband, Wazir Mohammed, 57, and Mohammed’s brother, Nazim, 52, said police told him their throats were slit. Police said on Thursday that the victims were shot sometime on Sunday.
The decomposing bodies were discovered on Thursday at about 3 pm at their home at Clarke Road in Penal.
The autopsies were done yesterday at the Forensic Science Centre (FSC).
The horrific discovery was made by their older son Vishard Mohammed, 21.
Dipraj said he did not have much to do with Ragoonanan’s husband and his family but described her as a kind-hearted person.
“She was really a good person...very quiet...they just would drop her off by me and come back for her. She never worked too as she had no cause to...her husband came from a money family.”
Dipraj said Vishard and him went to the house after Vishard complained to him that he failed numerous times to contact both his parents.
“When we went the gate was locked and the boy jumped the wall and went in the house...the door was open and that’s when he saw the bodies rotting and the children among the bodies... My heart broke...I started to cry to see the children in the state they were in,” Dipraj said.
While no motive was established for the Penal murders, investigators are probing whether Mohammed’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.