(Trinidad Express) Relatives of slain couple Anita Jagdeo and Randy Ramdass accused social media users of tarnishing their names while knowing nothing about them and why they were killed.
Steffan Jagdeo, the elder brother of Anita, spoke to the Express yesterday at the Forensic Science Centre, Federation Park, where relatives had gone to identify their bodies.
A post-mortem is scheduled for later this week.
On Sunday morning police were contacted by an anonymous caller who informed them that a woman’s body was seen in a car at Factory Road, Chaguanas.
When they arrived on the scene police discovered Anita Jagdeo slumped in the front passenger seat of a white Nissan AD wagon.
She had been shot in the head.
While carrying out their enquiries, officers said they found the body of Randy Ramdass in the trunk of the car. He, too, had been shot to death while a quantity of packaged marijuana was found in the vehicle.
Investigators said victims were not known to be involved in criminal activities.
Jagdeo said that news of the couple’s deaths devastated loved ones, but what was even worse was social media users who had their own theories about what happened and why.
“Social media eh, not media houses but social media. The keyboard warriors who like to type,” he said smugly.
“I know my sister,” he said.
“You could walk the entire village and ask anybody because they tarnishing my sister name and they tarnished what was to become my soon-to-be brother-in-law, which is not good,” Jagdeo said.
He continued.
“I was just sitting inside forensics there reading these comments of these illiterate people who love to type stupidness on social media,” he said.
“They don’t know the pain or what the family is going through and certain social media users on Facebook asking questions…if it was African, if it was East Indians, if it was Chinese if it was Spanish but at the end of the day two lives are gone not one,” he said.
“Who in the kitchen will feel the heat and it came to my house,” the grieving brother said.
“We accustomed seeing murders, killings, robberies and all we could do is pray and ask God to help these families but now we are in the position…we are asking you all to show some form of empathy to us nah, please,” he said.
‘Why them ?’
“They were normal people so the question is, why them as we are asking ourselves the same thing,” said Jagdeo.
“Their wedding was planned for next year, their house was almost finished and everything was going happy. Their business was thriving while they sacrificed and worked hard like two jobs, three jobs to reach where they were,” he said.
“I lost my mom three years ago and now my one and only sister,” he added.
The brother said he also had a mixture of praise and criticism for the police.
He acknowledged the country’s crime rate but added that while there were good police officers in the system there were some bad ones as well.
“The rogue elements know who they are. They help other persons from the outside cover up the crimes that someone else commits and then we have an acting Commissioner of Police who knows nothing. So we need a change and a change now to help curb this crime right now,” he said.
He was, however, grateful to the investigators he met on Sunday probing his sister’s murder. He praised them for being in constant contact with relatives.
Jagdeo said he is hopeful justice will come.
“This is murder and in the eyes of the Lord he knows what is right and he knows who these people are (the killers) and we will leave it in the hands of the Lord and in the hands of the TTPS,” he said.
Asked about the quantity of marijuana found near the bodies, he speculated it was placed there to throw investigators off.
“There is photos showing it and if you really looked into this it seems that this whole crime was orchestrated in such a way to throw the police off; but they (the police) are much smarter than that,” he said.
“I know my sister. We born and grow up together. I’m her big brother,” he said as he dismissed any idea she was into illegal drugs.
“There are certain things that I cannot disclose, but there are certain things the police will bring forward and we will soon have results to solve this crime,” Jagdeo added.
