JENSEN LA VENDE

Se­nior Re­porter

jensen.lavende@guardian.co.tt

Twen­ty-five-year-old Shyana Ruiz was laid to rest yes­ter­day, four days af­ter her ex-boyfriend and his teenage girl­friend were charged with her mur­der.

Ruiz, of Quar­ry Road, Diego Mar­tin, was stabbed mul­ti­ple times in the back, head, face, chest and hand on Ju­ly 29.

The Lit­tle Cae­sar’s em­ploy­ee had re­port­ed­ly gone to a house in Ch­agua­nas to col­lect $4,500 that was owed to her.

Ruiz was al­leged­ly asked to col­lect the mon­ey and, up­on ar­riv­ing at the house, she be­came em­broiled in a heat­ed ar­gu­ment with her for­mer part­ner.

It was claimed that dur­ing the al­ter­ca­tion, which took place in front of a rel­a­tive who had ac­com­pa­nied her, Ruiz was at­tacked and stabbed be­fore the cou­ple fled.

At Ruiz’s fu­ner­al ser­vice at St John’s Evan­ge­list Church, Diego Mar­tin, Fa­ther Dea­con Mike Smith re­called that she lived a life of peace and love and en­cour­aged those gath­ered to em­u­late those char­ac­ter­is­tics.

“I have a nice ques­tion to ask you all this morn­ing, now that this won­der­ful soul Shyana has gone home, while she was here, she was a liv­ing, walk­ing dis­ci­ple amongst you all be­cause you were see­ing God in her. So, my ques­tion to you, for all these years, 25 years liv­ing here, and show­ing love and care and at­ten­tion, she was preach­ing; she was liv­ing the word of God. So now that she has passed, who is tak­ing her place in her com­mu­ni­ty now?”

Among those who flocked to the church in­clud­ed ac­tivist Alyssa Phillip and gospel artiste Jaron Nurse.

Smith said Ruiz was a “jew­el in the com­mu­ni­ty,” ev­i­dent by those who gath­ered to sup­port her fam­i­ly mem­bers.

Ref­er­enc­ing Lord Nel­son’s Ca­lyp­so “All ah we is one fam­i­ly,” Smith said Ruiz em­bod­ied that mes­sage in the way she lived with oth­ers.

Ac­cord­ing to a T&T Po­lice Ser­vice me­dia re­lease yes­ter­day, Dar­i­an Phillip, 25, and Daniel­la Con­nell, 18, both of Ch­agua­nas, were charged in the mat­ter and ap­peared be­fore Mas­ter Tracey Vi­dale last Thurs­day.

The case was ad­journed to Oc­to­ber 8 for a sta­tus hear­ing, with a suf­fi­cien­cy hear­ing sched­uled for April 13, 2027.