For most of his adult life, Alexander Baksh had been caring for his ailing father, Jaglal Rampersad.
But there was nothing he could do to save the elderly man’s life when their wooden two-bedroom home went up in flames in the early hours of yesterday.
Baksh, 24, and his girlfriend, Shantel Huggins, 18, escaped with their own lives by jumping out a second storey bedroom window to the ground below.
But Rampersad, 73, was burnt to death in the fire, which Baksh believes his father may have set himself.
“I feel he was trying to light a candle for himself in the night and it catch up.
“We didn’t have current so we used candles all the time. But I don’t let him light any for himself to prevent anything from happening to him. I used to hide the matches from him so I don’t know where he got matches from,” Baksh told the T&T Guardian yesterday.
He said he prepared his father for bed as usual on Sunday night before he and Huggins retired to his bedroom on the second floor.
“We went to bed like normal and we fell asleep. When I woke up the heat was stifling me and I realised the room was filling up with smoke and the house was on fire. I woke up my girlfriend and I jumped out of the window first and made her jump second so I could catch her,” he said, adding he suffered bruises and cuts about the body but Huggins was unhurt.
Baksh then tried to get into his father’s room from the outside.
“The entire house was burning and I tried to get into his room but there was too much fire... I didn’t hear him call out or anything,” he added.
Officers from the Princes Town Fire Station responded but by the time they arrived the house was engulfed in flames.
Rampersad’s remains were taken to the San Fernando mortuary and then to a funeral home.
His former wife, Narisha Baksh, said yesterday she was unsure where the family would have his funeral service.
Although Narisha was separated from Rampersad, she said she brought him meals as he had been suffering from diabetes and hypertension for many years.
Baksh, who is a construction worker, said for the past two years he had been renovating the house.
“We lost everything. Even the clothes I am wearing right now are not mine. It will be very hard to start over after the money I spent fixing the house,” he added.