Witnessing the hacking to death of her two young children and surviving the most gruesome cutlass attack, that left her with a severed right hand, 26-year-old Nazaleena ‘Natasha’ Houston is still struggling to overcome the ordeal.
Speaking to Stabroek News from her Tuschen, East Bank Essequibo (EBE) home, she vividly recalled the bloodbath that occurred on July 31, 2013.
Around 6:30 pm on that fateful day, her estranged husband, Richard Lord, 26, dealt the fatal blows to the children, six-year-old Kimberly and two-year-old Saif and brutally wounded her after she refused his requests to reconcile.
She has received counseling from Help and Shelter (H&S), and although she is trying to cope she would “still get flashbacks.”
Houston has since remarried and has a nine-month-old daughter.
She desperately wanted another child and had four miscarriages before she finally gave birth.
But even as she tries her best to put the ordeal behind, the baby would be a constant reminder of her deceased children.
“Whenever she screams I would remember how my two children were screaming before they get murder,” she said.
She would have haunting memories of how their father, a cane-cutter, cold-bloodedly ended their screams with the very weapon he used to earn an income for their survival.
Whenever she gets the flashbacks she “would be harsh to my husband but I try to control it. Sometimes when we watching a movie or in my quiet moment when I get memories of the murder I would go away and lie down.”
If not, she “would get a temper and start quarreling and stammering. Then I know I have to stop myself.”
Her husband, Adrian had also sought counseling at H&S and thankfully, he understands her and is very supportive. He also helps her with chores around the house.
Two of his children; a daughter, aged 11, and a nine-year-old boy live with them. His daughter assists Houston to bathe the baby before going to school.
Houston is trying to bathe the baby on her own as well. She is even doing laundry, as well as cooking once she gets the assistance with chopping up the ingredients.
When this newspaper visited Houston at her home last week, her 15-year-old neighbour was helping to comb her hair.
Some days are not good but she told this newspaper: “I’m trying, ah can’t give up. I have to keep trying.”
Apart from slashing off her right arm at their Zeelugt, EBE home, Lord severed three fingers on her left hand, chopped her right shoulder and wrapped her long hair around her neck before chopping the back of her neck.
Thinking she was dead, he barged through the front door with the bloodied cutlass and escaped towards the coconut farm at the back.
On August 24, 2013, his decomposed body was found hanging from a tree at the Zeelugt foreshore.
Houston also thought she would have died and said it was a miracle that she survived the attack.
“I screamed so much when he chopped the children…. And when he chopped me I thought my life was done,” she said sadly.
She recalled that she had walked out of the marriage in the first place because of the constant abuse and oppression she suffered at his hands.
The abuse was fueled by his drinking habit and she made several attempts to leave him but he always got her to return. “When he finished cutting cane he would go and drink. And sometimes he would come till four in the morning and would wake them children to play with him. And I used to quarrel with him and then there would be a fight,” she said. Every time he consumed alcohol he would find a reason to abuse her.
He was very cruel to the children also and they “used to hide from him. He used to beat my daughter mercilessly.”
Lord was extremely jealous of Houston and she prevented her from going anywhere on her own.
“He didn’t even want me to go to the market because he didn’t want no man to see me. If any boy watch me he would get mad… He would beat me up,” Houston said.
She was not even allowed to visit her mother who was living in the same yard because “he tell me I would talk his name.”
Houston said he accused her of being unfaithful but he was actually the one having affairs.
She told this newspaper: “…When I asked him why he stay out of the house so long he would tell me he is his own big man and he was working for the money.”
He told her “I too nice for him and he left a mark on my face while trying to carve an ‘R’ (the first letter of his name), on it.
Leading up to the murder
In the events leading up to the murder, Houston recalled that she was on her way to the probation office at Phoenix Park, West Bank Demerara with the children when her attacker forced her into a taxi.
He kept hitting her in the car and she begged the driver to stop at the Vreed-en-Hoop, Den Amstel or Leonora police stations but he ignored her and kept driving. “I asked him if he would do the same if it his daughter…”
The taxi took them to their home located behind her mother’s house. Her oldest sister, Mary asked her why she came back because the man would keep beating her.
She blurted out: “Girl I come home back for my dead. But I didn’t even realize that’s what he was planning to do because he would always tell me he would kill me…”
When they got in the house he locked the door and continued to beat her while demanding to know where she had been.
“We were at my friend’s house but I didn’t want to tell him because he would go and make a problem. He told me to go back and get my clothes. But I tell him no, I don’t want him anymore because I can’t take the rum drinking and the abuse,” Houston said.
He told her “If I can’t get you nobody else can get you. They don’t know how you grow so big.”
She was just 14-years-old when she met Lord, who was five years her senior. He promised to love her and take good care of her. But once she moved with him “everything changed…” But it was too late and returning home was not an option.
She responded: “I never said I want anybody else. I just living for my two children…. because I can’t live with your torment anymore.”
He told her: “The only thing that can separate the two of us is death.”
All this time her mother was outside of the house pleading desperately for him to stop. She told him she did not “want any murder in her yard and he said, “Is all a y’all ah gon kill here today.”
In the midst of all this, her son said he was hungry and she made porridge and fed him.
Unknowing to her, the attacker sent Kimberly to the shop to buy chicken and Banko wine.
When the child returned, she asked him: “That is how you want us back in here and you’re still drinking?”
But he just said, “‘babe cook that chicken for me’ and I told him no and he cooked it. He took out food for all of us but I did not eat.”
After that he took the children outside and gave them baths while he locked her in the house. The children then asked to go over to their grandmother and he sent them.
He continued to beg her to take him back but she had already made up her mind not to. She told him to leave her and the children in the house and that he should go and live at his father’s house at Wales, West Bank Demerara.
He agreed and left to get Kimberly from next door “to pack up his bag.”
His daughter packed the bag and then told him she wanted to go outside. He did not let her go.
At that stage he again started to beat Houston, who had started to breastfeed Saif.
By then he heard Houston’s mother calling the police and he got angry and said: “If I have to go to jail let me go for something good.”
She suddenly felt “a lash” on her right hand but did not realize what had happened.
She recalled feeling “something warm (blood)” and a burning sensation and when she looked she saw the blood and her hand, which was barely hanging on to the skin.
Kimberly started screaming and was about to run but he “chopped her behind her neck and her head fell forward. Her body was trembling and he kicked her down.”
“I said you killed my daughter and I told the baby to run and he started to curse. I tried to open the door for the baby to run and he chopped off my three fingers and the small finger get chop too.”
He asked her “you want go (leave him)? I had long hair to my buttocks and he wrapped the hair around my neck and fired a chop.”
Her hair was chopped off and she sustained a wound to her neck and fell to the ground.
She could still hear the terrified screams from her son. But the man put out the lamp and chopped the baby and “the screaming stopped. … blood pitched next to me and I know he killed the baby.”
He then escaped with the murder weapon, pushing Houston’s mother off the veranda in the process and she fell in the drain.
According to Houston, “The police didn’t come when my mother called. They only came when a shop owner in the area called them.”
The cops did not want to “get blood in their vehicle” and only took her to the hospital at Leonora when the neighbours insisted. She was then taken to the Georgetown Public Hospital.
Prosthetics
Thanks to a team of doctors in Long Island, New York (NY) in the US, she now has prosthetics – a right arm and a left hand glove.
This was made possible through H&S and a group of NY-based Guyanese.
Houston is very thankful for the limbs as it has helped to boost her confidence when she goes out.
Before she got them she never wanted to go anywhere because of the stares and negative comments she got from the public. Besides, it was also difficult for her to go by herself.
But now she has no problem. She feels “more comfortable being in society with it… I don’t hear gossips anymore. I’m very happy I have it because it (has) helped to change my life,” she told SN.
That is actually the most benefit she has gotten from the prosthetics so far though. She only wears it when she is going out of the home. Houston would like to keep it on more often but she did not get to complete the rehabilitation process that would make it easier for her to adjust.
She said she will continue with the therapy when the baby is a little older.
The H&S had first taken her to the Ptolemy Reid Rehabilitation Centre to make the limbs “but they couldn’t do it because there was only a stump.” They then wrote a referral for her to get it done in NY.
After obtaining the US visa, Houston secured two free return tickets from Fly Jamaica. A group of people came together and helped to raise the funds for her to go while realtors, Tony and George Subraj provided her with a free apartment during her stay.
Meanwhile, Natasha is using her horrible experience in a positive way and has become an advocate in the fight against domestic violence.
As a survivor, she also wants other abused women to know that they too can get help and said she wished she knew about H&S before.
She also wanted the women to know that they do not have to stay in abusive relationships.
A few days before this interview, she had gone to share her story with other women at a domestic violence event.
She urged them to walk out as soon as they notice signs of abusive tendencies in their partners and not wait until it is too late, like she did.
