Gasparillo mother killed, child can't live with father

A ten-year old girl is unable to live with her father who is 83, after her mother was killed on Thursday evening near her home in Gasparillo.

The child now must stay with her grandmother and other relatives who live close to her home at Darneaud Trace. Her father is ill and unable to provide proper care for her.

Around 6.55 pm, Chandramatie Sammy Rojan, 43, and a female relative were walking along a track that led to Rojan's mother’s home, when a gunman approached and fired several shots at them.

The relative ran for help but Rojan was hit several times and died at the scene. The gunman escaped in a white vehicle.

Speaking with the media on Friday morning, people who wished not to be identified said the incident was related to a land dispute involving Rojan's family.

One person said, “It has been going on for a while now. She was threatened several times before. The incident started when Rojan’s husband Eunos fell ill about six months ago.

“In the early part of January, two men with guns tied her up in her house and duct-taped her mouth. When they saw her sister, the men ran. A week after the fired shots at her.”

Rojan usually visited her mother every evening and had dinner with her family. On Thursday she was about to do the same after she went to at a nearby pharmacy to buy flu medication for her daughter, who was with her grandmother at the time.

Eunos Rojan said his wife and a relative often argued.

But, he said, “I don’t know why this happened. I really don’t know anything. Nobody has told me anything yet.”

Snr Supt Mohammed and police from the Southern Division as well as Homicide Bureau Region III are investigating.