Sascha Wil­son

Se­nior Re­porter

sascha.wil­son@guardian.co.tt

The bru­tal mur­der of an el­der­ly woman in a home in­va­sion has prompt­ed re­newed calls for in­creased se­cu­ri­ty in the Moru­ga com­mu­ni­ty.

Po­lice be­lieve Dru­patee Chance was smoth­ered with a pil­low and are await­ing foren­sic tests to de­ter­mine whether she was raped.

Vil­lagers and rel­a­tives looked on in shock and sad­ness as un­der­tak­ers re­moved the woman’s body from her Moru­ga Road, St Mary’s Vil­lage home yes­ter­day morn­ing.

Chance and her 71-year-old hus­band Clarence were tied up, beat­en and robbed by two men who broke in­to their home on Wednes­day night.

Their son re­turned home from work around 5.15 am and found his fa­ther tied to a bed up­stairs in their home. In an­oth­er room, he saw the life­less body of his moth­er on a bed. Her hands were tied with a rope and her feet with an elec­tri­cal cord. The woman’s night gown was pulled up to her chest and her un­der­wear was down to her an­kles.

The cou­ple went to sleep around 10 pm but short­ly af­ter the hus­band heard a bang­ing noise and went to in­ves­ti­gate. He was ac­cost­ed by two men, wear­ing face masks and hood­ies and armed with a knife and firearm. They beat and tied him to a bed and robbed him of $1,000.

He then heard loud nois­es and male voic­es shout­ing: “Where the US mon­ey?”

Rel­a­tives said Chance on­ly re­turned to the coun­try on Jan­u­ary 15 af­ter vis­it­ing her two daugh­ters abroad. She was the grand­moth­er of six and moth­er of four chil­dren—one of her sons was mur­dered about 12 years ago.

Chance’s nephew Anil Math­ai, a busi­ness­man, said last Oc­to­ber he was robbed at gun­point and on Mon­day his broth­er-in-law was robbed.

“In­no­cent peo­ple are dy­ing. My aunt re­cent­ly came back from Amer­i­ca and this is what she had to come and face this morn­ing. She came back and spent her beloved time with her fam­i­ly and this morn­ing to face death in this trag­ic way. So please I am plead­ing with the coun­try, the gov­ern­ment, the po­lice ser­vices, each and every­one please come out and let us do some­thing about this in this coun­try,” he said.

He plead­ed with the po­lice hi­er­ar­chy to grant firearm user li­cences (FUL) to le­git­i­mate busi­ness­men.

Moru­ga/Table­land MP Michelle Ben­jamin said she felt heart­bro­ken as she lived just three blocks away and knows the Chance fam­i­ly very well.

“This morn­ing what do you say? You ask the gov­ern­ment to in­ter­vene. You ask the Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice to in­ter­vene, things I have done in the past. We were guar­an­teed we would have a town hall meet­ing. We would have got­ten more pa­trols, none of these things ma­te­ri­alised since the fa­ther and daugh­ter were mur­dered,” she said.

Ben­jamin called for in­creased pa­trols and for the St Mary’s Po­lice Post to be con­vert­ed in­to a po­lice sta­tion.

Of­fi­cers from the Homi­cide Bu­reau of In­ves­ti­ga­tions Re­gion 3 are in­ves­ti­gat­ing.