Girl commits suicide after ‘spiritual attack’

Stevelin Showvanna Taylor who was buried on Tuesday.
Stevelin Showvanna Taylor who was buried on Tuesday.

LAUREL V WILLIAMS

ONE of the victims of a 2010 incident, described as an attack by evil spirits at the Moruga Secondary School, was buried on Tuesday one week after she set herself ablaze.

Relatives said that Stevelin Showvanna Taylor, of Sixth Company Road, Moruga, was never the same since the incident. She also began hearing voices which, they believe, led her to eventually take her life.

Reports are at about 2 pm on August 3, relatives saw Taylor in the roadway near her home with her lower body on fire. After outing the flames, she was taken to the San Fernando General Hospital where she died last week Thursday.

“I feel this thing told her to do that because they (relatives) said Showvanna was not even bawling although both feet were on fire,” her grandmother Cynthia Jointe, 73, said.

“She never told me directly how the thing happened at the school, but after the incident she used to say, ‘Mama I am hearing voices in my head.’”

Taylor, who once worked as a cashier at a supermarket in San Fernando, began having sleeping problems which relatives directly attributed the incident at the school. Jointe recalled that back in November 2010, when the incident occurred, Taylor was in Form Three but refused to continue her studies at Basseterre Village, Moruga school.

She completed her secondary school education at another institution in San Fernando. Taylor was among at least 16 students who fell ill and had to be given medical treatment. Religious groups hosted an interfaith service at the school.

Jointe said Taylor, “a nice child”, lived a tormented life although relatives repeatedly searched for spiritual help to heal her.

“One minute she was good and normal, and the next she was not. Her mother (Sherry Ann Jointe) had carried her to the psychiatric clinic but that was not any use. Sometimes she would past me straight without saying ‘morning’ or anything.”

Once, relatives took her to a church in Princes Town to have a religious leader/spiritual healer to pray and ‘heal’ her.

“When they reached, she came out the car and refused to enter the building. Instead she walked back home. That was the jumbie not wanting her to go inside.”

Comments

"Girl commits suicide after ‘spiritual attack’"

More in this section