Sascha Wil­son

Se­nior Re­porter

sascha.wil­son@guardian.co.tt

An ear­ly-morn­ing at­tack left a La Ro­maine woman with se­ri­ous burns af­ter she was al­leged­ly doused with Pun­cheon rum and set on fire by her ex-boyfriend in­side her home yes­ter­day.

The 38-year-old woman was treat­ed at the San Fer­nan­do Gen­er­al Hos­pi­tal for sec­ond-de­gree burns to her face, neck, and chest, cov­er­ing 22.5 per cent of her body.

Short­ly be­fore 2 am, she was asleep at her Murli Street home when she heard loud bang­ing at her front door. Up­on check­ing, she saw her 40-year-old for­mer boyfriend forc­ing his way in­side while hold­ing a bot­tle of Pun­cheon rum.

Ac­cord­ing to po­lice, the man ac­cost­ed her in the hall­way and poured the rum over her.

A strug­gle en­sued, dur­ing which the sus­pect flicked a lighter, ig­nit­ing the woman. She ran in­to a bed­room and fell on­to her bed. The man then ex­tin­guished the flames be­fore flee­ing the scene.

The woman ran to a neigh­bour’s home, where po­lice and emer­gency health ser­vices were con­tact­ed. Of­fi­cers lat­er re­cov­ered the bot­tle of Pun­cheon rum at the scene.

Po­lice said the sus­pect, who re­port­ed­ly lives on Church Street, Bar­rack­pore, was not im­me­di­ate­ly ap­pre­hend­ed. San Fer­nan­do po­lice are con­tin­u­ing their in­ves­ti­ga­tion.