'LEELA WAS MY LIFE'By STACY MOORE Monday, August 20 2012
A BLIND man yesterday found his wife naked, her body covered in blood from a gaping wound to her head, the victim of a brutal robbery attack at their home on Oli Mohammed Trace, Barrackpore.
“How could this happen? My wife is a blessed woman. I don’t know why someone would want to do something like this to her. She didn’t deserve this,” wept Deodath Deonarinesingh, 68, who wondered how he would live without Leela, his wife of close to 50 years.
Leela, 64, a mother of two and grandmother of four, was brutally murdered, her head bashed in by killers who broke into the couple’s home while they slept on Saturday night, and stole an undisclosed sum of money.
Police investigators believe the killers entered the yard by cutting a hole in the wire fence at the front of the couple’s home. A 37-year-old watchman was held in connection with the murder and remained in police custody late yesterday.
Neighbours were first alerted to the horrific death by the screams of Deodath, who found his wife’s body at about 7 am.
Helped by relatives to stand, Deodath, who is blind and diabetic, said he last spoke to his wife at about 6 pm on Saturday when she prepared a sandwich for him.
“We were speaking and I was eating my sandwich and listening to the news,” the tearful man told Newsday. Later that evening, Deodath went downstairs of the family’s one-storey home to secure the gates as he is always did.
“I always make sure the gates are locked, so I use my hands to be my guide and also to make sure the dogs do not go outside,” he related.
After locking up, Deodath stayed in a room downstairs listening to the radio and fell asleep. Trying to hold back his tears, he said his wife would always make his tea and leave it in the microwave for him on mornings. There was no tea set out for him when he woke at about 5 am yesterday.
“There was no tea in the microwave. I thought she had gone to make market and then two hours passed and I didn’t hear her call my name. I heard no movements in the house, so I began to get worried, I thought she probably overslept,” Deodath said.
The elderly man then made his way upstairs to the bedroom.
“I called out to her. There was no answer and I walked towards the bed. I felt for her and I found her, but her body was cold. Not normal cold but ice cold like if she was dead,” he said.
In shock, Deodath pulled away his hand and began to scream for help.
“I screamed and screamed. Then I heard voices inside the house. My neighbours had heard my screams and then they told me, ‘They kill your wife’,” he recalled. “They killed her and I didn’t even hear nothing, I didn’t hear no one come into our house. I didn’t hear the dogs barking, I didn’t hear nothing. I feel like if I could go with her right now. The way I am feeling I just don’t know if I can go on,” Deodath wept. “She was always looking after me, she was one of the kindest persons I ever knew. So genuinely caring and loving. I don’t know why they kill her.”
Deodath believes his wife may have been killed at about midnight, because her body was “ice cold”.
Neighbour Mala Singh said she rushed to the couple’s house when she heard Deodath’s screams.
“I went straight upstairs and I saw Leela naked on the bed and her face was covered in blood and her hair was in her face. The sheet was bloody and she was lying on her back,” Singh said.
She said there were items scattered in the bedroom.
“I don’t know if it is she probably tried to fight up with the killers, but I saw things scattered in the bedroom,” Singh said tearfully. Leela’s head may have been bashed in with a blunt object, investigators said, and because she was found naked, they also believe she may have been sexually assaulted but this would have to be determined by an autopsy, which is due to take place tomorrow at the Forensic Science Centre, St James.
Investigations are being led by Sgt Anderson Pariman and PC Rampersad.
Leela is the fourth woman to be murdered over the past seven days.
Last Monday, Judy Parris, 43, of Guanapo Estate, Rio Claro was stabbed and chopped to death by her estranged husband, who was found hanging at the back of his house the next day.
Then on Thursday tragedy struck again, when 24-year-old Giselle Crystal Meloney was hacked to death at her Guaico home allegedly at the hands of her estranged boyfriend, a policeman who remains in custody.
Early on Saturday morning, Ayanna Williams died after being shot 13 times at her home in Morvant. Police said she may have been murdered because some believed she was an informant.
And two weeks before these killings, Domowattie Jadoonanan, 56, was found strangled in her Debe home.
Jadoonanan, who was disabled due to poliomyelitis, was found by neighbours with marks on her neck. A 29-year-old handyman who had done odd jobs at her house has since appeared before a San Fernando magistrate charged with her murder.
