A West Coast Berbice grandmother was raped and strangled sometime between Saturday night and Sunday morning and a relative has been arrested for the grisly crime.
The death of Vaulda Britton, 78, called ‘Aunty ‘Vie,’ of Hopetown, did not arouse much suspicion until her son noticed marks of violence after viewing her body on Monday. An autopsy later confirmed that she had been raped and strangled. Police yesterday said a man was arrested.
Stabroek News was told that the man is a relative who had volunteered to spend the night at her house on Saturday.
The man, who has been described as a drug addict, is considered the only suspect in the crime and he could face a murder charge as early as today. The suspect is said to be known to authorities after having served time in prison for larceny and other offences.
Stabroek News has learned that the man agreed to stay over on a mattress in the living room, since Britton’s caregiver was out for the night.
A neighbour reported hearing Britton’s eight-year-old granddaughter, who was also sleeping over on Saturday night, crying. It did not last for long and the neighbour dismissed the thought that anything was amiss.
It has since come to light that after hearing the girl crying, the suspect went into her room, hit her about the body and told her to stop crying.
The next morning, the man told the neighbour that the girl had been weeping constantly and she should check on her. It was at that point that Britton’s lifeless body was found on her bed.
Police were reportedly told that she fell and died.
In the community yesterday, many expressed shock at the news of the woman’s murder. “A woman like her we expect her to die because of health complications but never of such a horrifying act,” a woman said as she shook her head in disbelief.
Although at the time of the discovery of her body the woman was found with minor lacerations on her face and was bleeding through her ears and nose, many still had believed that she died due to health complications.
However, questions were raised when one of her sons arrived from Linden and enquired further about his mother’s death. According to Rudolph Britton, a Rural Constable, he was told that the police never went and viewed his mother’s body at her home.
He said police were negligent by failing to visit the home. His mother’s sister, he explained, had called the police, who instructed that the family take the body to the hospital to pronounce the woman dead and then transfer it to the mortuary. “The police lapse big time. At no time police should say carry the dead to the hospital and let the doctor pronounce it dead, they were supposed to come in the house and see the person lying dead on a bed,” he said.
The man said when he arrived on Monday, he went to the police station and indicated he would like to see his mother’s body at the morgue. He was accompanied by a police officer, to whom he pointed out several cuts and bruises on the woman’s face and a dent to her temple.
“I see a bruise on her nose and a dig on her cheek and her temple black and blue, so I show the police it and told him that somebody can’t fall down and get all these marks. And then I see he take out his phone and start take some pictures,” he recalled.
He added that he also observed “white substances” on his mother’s private parts and it was then that he suspected that she was also sexually molested.
Rudolph Britton told Stabroek News that when he visited a relative, who is the suspect’s grandmother, he was told that moments earlier the man had threatened to rape and sodomise her if she did not give him $10,000. Not long after, the man was arrested and taken into police custody.
Vaulda Britton is survived by her husband, eight children and a number of grandchildren.
