Imam tells mourners: Send strong message to authorities

SHARLENE RAMPERSAD

As murdered mother of three Alicia Mohammed was laid to rest yesterday, Imam Kazim Ali called on mourners to send a strong message to authorities that they have had enough of crime.

Mohammed, 48, a domestic worker, was killed by intruders at her John Peter Road, Charlieville home early on Wednesday morning. She and her common-law husband Ishwar Mangalee, 41, were asleep when three men broke down their door. The men tied Mangalee with shoelaces and made the couple lie face-down on opposite sides of their bed before shooting Mohammed once in the back of the head. Mangalee was not hurt.

Yesterday, Ali, the head of the Marabella Muslim Association, said Mohammed’s murder is not the first and will not be the last. Mohammed is the 46th woman killed for the year. She was buried at the Charlieville Cemetery.

Congress of the People political leader Carolyn Seepersad-Bachan attended the service but did not address mourners.

“How much more can this country take?” Ali asked.

“Every day when you watch the news media, the newspapers, the television, it is murder after murder and yet still we cannot become accustomed to that.

“Where next is it going to come? Let us send a message to the authorities that while they are in their high towers, while they have all the security to protect them and they eat and dance on the boat, we have to barricade ourselves in our homes behind bars.” He said communities must learn to stand together in the face of evil.

Speaking to Newsday before the funeral, Mohammed’s sister Sabrina Francis-Nandlal said the rest of her family is living in fear.

“We are hearing talk that my mother and my next sister are next. They (killers) say they couldn’t get my mother and sister, so they take Alicia life to send my mother a message,” an emotional Francis-Nandlal said.

No arrests have been made so far and Couva CID are continuing investigations.