Suspect may be in Guyana after murder of girl, 18, in T&T

The police in Trinidad & Tobago believe that the killer of Nikita Ramischand, the 18-year-old daughter of prominent Guyana-born attorney Odai Ramischand, left the island on a Caribbean Airlines flight and has returned to Guyana.

Law enforcement agents on the island had launched a manhunt for a 25-year-old Guyanese construction worker, who they believe murdered the teenager. Nikita’s throat was slit and she was stabbed several times in the abdomen, during an attack near her mother’s salon in Maracas on Wednesday night. Investigators believe the suspect was obsessed with Nikita who rejected his marriage proposal a few weeks ago.

Nikita Ramischand

“This is definitely a murder which we will be able to solve since we know who killed Nikita and we know who we are searching for,” Deputy Police Commissioner Mervyn Richardson told the Trinidad newspaper Newsday on Thursday. He said investigators had expected to detain the suspect, whose last known address was Felicity in Central Trinidad.

However, a source in Trinidad told Stabroek News yesterday that records obtained by the police showed that the suspect left the island for Guyana on a Caribbean Airlines flight. Authorities in the island are working with Interpol in their efforts to apprehend the suspect, Stabroek News was told.

Newsday reported yesterday that Nikita, a second-year ACCA student of the School of Business and Computer Sciences (SBCS), worked at Casa de Belize, a salon her mother Shariza operated, next to the family home at LP 46 Maracas Royal Road, Maracas, St Joseph. Nikita was supposed to attend to a client at the salon at about 7 pm on Wednesday. Police believe that while walking to the salon, Nikita was ambushed by the suspect who dragged her behind the premises where he slit her throat and stabbed her in her abdomen.

Newsday reported that Shariza told police that she did not hear any screams or any strange noises, but when Nikita failed to arrive at the salon she became suspicious and began calling her cellphone. When the calls went unanswered, Shariza, her husband, Odai, their eldest son Sid and another brother and sisters began searching for Nikita. They found Nikita’s bloodied body behind the salon at about 8 pm.

Newsday said the police believe the killer scaled a ten-foot, razor-edged wire fence, located on the northern side of the Ramischand family home, and hid in the compound and waited for Nikita. According to the report, homicide officers were called in as well as District Medical Officer Dr Richards who instructed that Nikita’s body be taken to the Forensic Science Centre, St James for an autopsy which took place on Thursday.

The report said that before the autopsy, Shariza identified her daughter’s body after which the distraught woman was led away by weeping relatives. The autopsy, performed by pathologist Dr Eastlyn McDonald-Burris, revealed that Nikita bled to death after her throat was slit. She also received six stab wounds to the abdomen.

Police believe the murder weapon was a kitchen knife which has not yet been found, Newsday reported. Sid, Nikita’s eldest brother, told Newsday that three months ago, his father hired construction workers to work on the property where they lived and it was then that Nikita met the suspect.

He said the two spoke frequently on the phone, but when the suspect asked Nikita to marry him a few weeks ago, she refused.

Sid said the suspect began making threatening phone calls to Nikita. Three weeks ago, the suspect scaled the razor-wire fence, entered the property and threatened Nikita. According to the Newsday report, it was only when Nikita said she would call the police that the suspect left. Sid added that his sister started a new relationship a few weeks ago and he believed this may have angered the suspect.

Sid believes Nikita was being stalked and called on the police to find her killer. “My sister was such a brilliant student who passed her exams with flying colours and we know she had a bright future ahead of her.

But now that she has been snatched away from us, it seems like a bad nightmare but we are all trying to deal with this and we know that our love for each other will pull us through,” Newsday quoted him as saying.

He said he was keeping a level head to provide emotional support for his family. “We will never get over this. There are five of us now but there will always be six since Nikita will always be a part of our family forever,” he said.

Newsday reported that police returned to the murder scene on Thursday and searched for clues. Members of the legal fraternity expressed their condolences to Odai and his family and senior police officers pledged to do everything to bring the killer to justice, the newspaper reported.