Latest update February 19th, 2025 1:44 PM
Latest News
- Several Venezuelan gang members wounded during ambush of Guyanese Soldiers
- Govt. unbothered by Trumps’ drill-baby-drill campaign impacting oil prices – VP Jagdeo
- Russia hardens demands as it holds first talks with US and without Ukraine
- Collaboration and commitment make Guyana special for investment- Exxon’s Senior VP tells Energy Conference
- Guyana calls on Venezuela to condemn attacks on soldiers
Husband sets wife, children ablaze
– after dousing them with gasoline
Up to late last night the police were still on the hunt for a West Coast Berbice man who reportedly doused his reputed wife and their two children with gasoline and set them on fire.
Fortunately, 32-year-old Ann Simon, and her children, Prince, five, and Osafo Todd, three, survived the assault and are nursing various degrees of burns about their bodies.
Simon suffered the most as the gasoline was poured directly on her chest and face before her reputed husband lit a cigarette lighter and set her ablaze.
The two children who were asleep on the floor of their Bel Air, West Coast Berbice home, suffered burns to their feet, with Prince sustaining the worse.
Five-year-old Prince Todd resting in hospital after sustaining burns on both feet.
The attack occurred at around 01:50 hours, shortly after the suspect had broken into their home.
Speaking from her bed in the Fort Wellington Hospital, Simon recalled a life of beatings at the hands of the suspect who she said is reluctant to maintain his children.
A few months ago the couple was engaged in a bitter fight during which the suspect brutally assaulted Simon, causing her severe injuries to her face.
However, as is the case of most domestic violence matters, the police did not take any significant action.
Simon believes that since her reputed husband, a truck driver attached to GUYSUCO, is the brother of a senior police detective, ranks at the Fort Wellington Police Station had refused to act against him.
This led to further abuse which resulted in Simon putting her reputed husband out of the house that they shared.
“I tek he things and I pack it up and I say ‘Man you got to go’. I went by he mother and complain to them,” Simon told this newspaper.
Since then the suspect has been sleeping under the house or sometimes in the truck that he drives.
According to Simon, last night she went to another village to undertake some domestic chores which helps her with her children’s upkeep.
When she returned, she was told that the suspect had removed the lock from her door. She said that she secured the house and went to bed.
Shortly after midnight she was aroused by a noise in her house and upon investigating, she saw her reputed husband.
“When I get up and go outside, I see the person and I call out to he. As soon as I open me mouth, is the gasoline in me face. And then he light de lighter,” Simon recalled.
She said that some of the gasoline landed on the children who were sleeping on the floor and they too were set alight.
With her upper body in flames, Simon ran out of the house and managed to make it to her sister’s home a short distance away.
By this time neighbours were aroused and they ran over and put out the flames in the house and rescued the children.
Simon said that the man used a hole in the floor to gain entry into the house.
After setting his family alight, the suspect fled and has not yet been captured.
Simon’s relatives told this newspaper that the suspect had gone to the Fort Wellington Police Station yesterday but was sent away by the police there who told him to come back.
“This is unfair man,” a male relative lamented.
Simon’s sister, Vanessa, indicated that she was at the station when the suspect was sent away.
“I went in the station with he and he sister and he asking if she get burn bad. Then the police tell he, ‘Go long, go long, come back later’. They already know wha happen,” she said.
This newspaper visited the Fort Wellington Police Station and a rank there denied that the man was sent away.
The rank said that the suspect had never gone to the station.
Family members believe that if the suspect is not caught, he may return to finish the job he had started.
Except for some clothes, the house where the incident occurred was not badly damaged.
Similar Articles
THE BLUNT OF THE DAY
Sports
Features/Columnists
Mashramani must break from the shackles of imitation
Peeping Tom… Kaieteur News- Mashramani, heralded as Guyana’s grand national celebration, is often presented as a... more
CARICOM Nations Should Respond Together To new U.S. Policies
By Sir Ronald Sanders Ambassador to the US and the OAS, Sir Ronald Sanders Kaieteur News-Two Executive Orders issued by U.S.... more
Weekend Cartoon
