Acid victim Joann Lynch on Wednesday spent some three hours recounting to a rank from the Guyana Police Force her horrific experience on that June 2006 day when her face was disfigured with acid by the former lover of her then boyfriend.
“Two ranks from Georgetown came to my home very early this morning [Wednesday morning] and I spent three exhausting hours recounting the incident,” Lynch told this newspaper. In the end some eight pages of information was recorded by the officer and a copy was made by the victim in her effort to keep a record of what she told the police as Wednesday’s ordeal was the fourth statement given to police ranks.
In recent months after she found out that her attacker Onika Sinclair was living it up in Trinidad, Lynch gave two statements to two different officers and was told that the file on the matter could not be found even though Sinclair was charged and the matter put down indefinitely.
However, on Wednesday Lynch said she was informed by an officer in the city, who spoke to her after she had initially informed the visiting police officer she was too exhausted to go over the incident, that the force has the file. It is not clear, however, why the police would need another statement from Lynch if they have the file. Her sister who also witnessed the attack gave another statement to the police.
Lynch said she hopes that the statement would result in Sinclair being arrested and justice being served. On Monday she had informed this newspaper that since last year September she had informed the local police that the young woman, whom she found on the social network Facebook, was in Trinidad but according to her instead of acting on the information they had her “running around in circles.”
She had stated that police in Trinidad informed her that the police in Guyana needed to send a formal letter requesting that the young woman be arrested. On Tuesday Crime Chief Seelall Persaud said that since October last year the police faxed up information to their counterparts in Trinidad but he did not say if or what follow-up actions were taken.
It is now almost one year since that information would have been faxed up and Sinclair, a mother of two, is yet to be arrested. Lynch had said that the Trinidad police had said the information their Guyanese counterparts had faxed up was limited and they needed the formal letter to arrest the young woman.
Lynch has been in constant contact with two officers from Trinidad and she and her sister had even travelled to the twin-island republic and spoken to the officers. She said when one of the officers saw how her face was disfigured -she lost one of her eyes in the attack- he exclaimed that the young woman should be arrested right away.
The victim said for months she waited for the local police to do something and she did not want to come to the media for help as she wanted the police to give her help.
She became so frustrated that on the advice of one of the Trinidadian police officers she hired the services of a lawyer who wrote to the police requesting information but is yet to receive a response.
“I had nowhere else to turn and I was frustrated and so I turn to the media, now I see like something happening and I hope it means that Onika would be arrested. But it seems as the only way people can get justice is by going to the media,” the young woman said.
She said the police in Trinidad said they had confirmed that Sinclair was in the twin island but now she is hoping that her attacker has not slipped out of that island.
Persaud had said the police have checked their immigration records and there is no record of Sinclair leaving the country and she may have used false documentation or left the country illegally. “”I just want justice, that is all I am begging for, for the police to give me justice,” the frustrated young woman said.
She added that since the story appeared in Stabroek News on Tuesday she has received dozens of e-mails from persons and the love has been comforting.
