Police have launched a manhunt for a second suspect in the attempted rape and murder of a 24-year-old Eastern Regional Health Authority employee yesterday.
Nerissa Nickey Goora, 24, a clerk at Sangre Grande Health Centre at River Road, died at hospital after she was stabbed by one of two men who attacked her as she was walking to her Tamana Hill home on Wednesday evening.
Relatives said she gave a description of at least one of the suspects before she was taken away to hospital and police used this description to detain a man yesterday.
The detained man was assisting police in apprehending the second suspect up to last night.
Goora died of a stab wound she received just above her navel while undergoing emergency surgery at the Sangre Grande Hospital.
Her grandmother, Surujdaye Boodoo, told T&T Guardian she was in her living room around 2.10 pm on Wednesday when she heard Goora frantically calling to her. Boodoo said she went out into the gallery and saw Goora lying on the couch covered in blood with her blouse torn apart.
The shocked woman said she asked Goora what happened.
“Nerissa uttered these words to me while gasping for breath ... ‘Deedee I got stab.’”
Boodoo said Goora told her “a black creole boy who was hiding in the bushes” attacked her and managed to give a description of her attacker before she fell back on the couch and fell unconscious.
Boodoo said she cried out for help, calling to Goora’s father, Ignacio, who lives two houses away, and telling him to organise transport to take her to the hospital.
A neighbour who was passing by stopped and put Boodoo in his vehicle and rushed her to the Sangre Grande Hospital.
Doctors took her to the operating theater immediately but she died on the operating table.
Ignacio Goora said yesterday he believed his daughter was attacked while walking along the lonely part of Tamana Hill Road.
He said she seemed to have put up a good fight her against her attackers and managed to evade them and run to her grandmother's home, which is about 300 meters away, even after they stabbed her as she tussled with them.
Noting, Goora always walked home by herself along the road after work, the distraught father said he was still confused by the attack.
“I always know my daughter to be friendly and she has no enemies,” he said, trying to hold back the tears.
Nedira Goora, the victim’s sister, said Nerissa brought lunch for her earlier on Wednesday outside the Economy Supermarket.
“I could not believe that my little sister, who was alive a few hours ago, is dead,” she said.
She said her sister’s killing was the first murder at Tamana Hill, noting it was peaceful agricultural village.
“Everyone lives as a family in here and we’re free to move in and out of the village without any fear. Now I have to be very careful when walking along the road,” the tearful woman said.
She said they often had to walk home because vehicles stopped working inside the community because of the deplorable condition of the roads. Taxis, she said, drop them along the Guaico Tamana Road and they walk the rest of the way to get home.
“I will miss Nerissa,” she said, noting she calls her 'Smile' because of her positive demeanour.
The woman’s co-workers at Sangre Grande Health Center were also distraught over her killing. Chrystal Sookdeo, one of her close friends, said Nerissa was jolly and making jokes with them and all those who had attended clinic on Wednesday.
“Her death has traumatised some of us if not all. In the morning Nerissa was alive, in the afternoon she left for the bank and then we received the news that she is dead,” Sookdeo said.
Goora was the second woman to be murdered after leaving their workplace in Sangre Grande recently.
Police are still investigating the murder of Felicia Persad, of Vega de Oropouche, whose body was found in Mitan River, Manzanilla, last month.
Persad was found in a leather bag which had been tied to the root of a mangrove tree and weighted down with piece of a decorative concrete pillar. Her killer/killers are yet to be arrested.
RALPH BANWARIE