The Sandy’s Funeral Home has offered to do the funeral for the 11 victims of the Lusignan Massacre for free, owner of the business, Michael Sandy has said.

Supervisor at Sandy’s, Renison Alleyne contacted Stabroek News yesterday and revealed that the funeral service had offered free coffins to the 11 victims. When asked to confirm this last evening, Sandy said that the funeral services would be offered free. He had previously said that he knew nothing about this.

Alleyne told Stabroek News that following the killings, the families were contacted and the coffins offered, free of charge and they accepted this and signed documents for Sandy’s to collect the bodies after the post-mortem examinations. He said that on Monday, he had gone down to the Georgetown Hospital mortuary to collect the bodies but there was some confusion as to which funeral home the bodies were to go to.

First Lady Varshnie Jagdeo yesterday said she was asked by several of the families of those murdered on Saturday at Lusignan to intervene with the Lyken’s funeral parlour so they could get possession of the bodies.

Mrs Jagdeo was responding to a report in yesterday’s edition of Stabroek News where several comments were attributed to her by Dr Dawn Stewart of the Lyken Funeral Home. Mrs Jagdeo said that contrary to what Dr Stewart said she had not contacted Dr Stewart. She said one of the relatives of the victims had been speaking to her about the problems they were having and then passed the phone to Dr Stewart.

Mrs Jagdeo said she was concerned that the families were being put through more distress as a result of the contention over the bodies.