Minutes after residents of Walcott Lane, Enterprise, found the battered, nude body of one of their neighbours in a track yesterday, they saw another neighbour eating a piece of bake and pumpkin while trying to wash blood off his clothes.
The residents cornered the man and although he put up a struggle, he was eventually subdued and handed over to the police. The dead body was identified as that of Pamela Balgobin, 37. Balgobin and the suspect, now in police custody, grew up in Walcott Lane together.
When the T&T Guardian visited the scene yesterday, Balgobin’s siblings, Geeta Ragoobar, 56, and Vashti Ramkissoon, expressed shock over their younger sister’s death. Balgobin had four children, ages 21, 19, 17 and 15. She was also the grandmother of a four-year-old boy.
Ragoobar said she was told her sister was returning home when a man snatched money from her hand and she confronted him.
“Someone saw it and they said he snatched her money from her hand and she began arguing with him to get it back,” she said.
“Then a little while after a next neighbour was passing through the track and saw a body...he came and told my nephew and niece but when they got there they realised it was her.” Balgobin’s head and face were bashed in and her throat had been slit. Her tattered tiger-striped pants and top were strewn next to her body.
“My niece say she couldn’t even make out that it was her, her entire face was gone. Is only when she watched the body good, then she realised and she run home to get a sheet to cover her body.” She said her sister’s alleged attacker was seen about 30 feet away from her body, washing blood off his clothing.
“They noticed him by the pipe in the savannah washing blood off his clothes. When they went up to him he was eating the bake and pumpkin and laughing and talking. They asked him what happened and he said he didn’t do anything, but the fellas hold him and tell him he not leaving till the police come.”
Officers of the Chaguanas Police Station responded to the scene and took the man into custody. Crime Scene Unit investigators removed a piece of wood and the base of a blender from the scene yesterday. Balgobin lived in a small wooden house opposite Ramkissoon. She recalled seeing her sister around 11 pm on Monday.
“I was watching the US elections and she came for something to eat. I saw my son give her a sandwich and a cup of tea and she left,” Ramkissoon said.
“She left and went home...that was the last I saw of her.” She described her sister as cool and quiet.
“She never interfere with anyone, if you ask her to do anything for you she would do it willingly.”
One of Balgobin’s sons, Justin, 19, said he last saw his mother on Monday.
“She came up by us, eat and lime and then told me she was going by my sister to see her grandchild,” Justin said. He said the family of the man held for the incident and his family got along well and he had no idea why the man would want to harm his mother.
“All of them grew up together, I don’t know what happen to him that he do those things, my mother didn’t deserve that. I am angry and hurting right now.”
Her killing has taken the murder tally to 398 for the year.