Residents give details of Wednesday night’s assault; some say police yet to take their statements

Mar 02, 2021 News

Serial rapist caught…

By Shervin Belgrave

Neighbours at the scene Wednesday night.

Kaieteur News – Yesterday as cops nabbed the man accused of raping, sodomizing and battering a Venezuelan woman, his neighbours decided to share with Kaieteur News some grim details of the brutal assault which took place Wednesday last.
Police have since identified the suspect as 36-year-old, Thurston Semple, a taxi driver, of Lot 5A, Tucville Terrace, Georgetown.
Kaieteur News was told that the cops returned to the suspect’s home and arrested him in the early hours of yesterday.
Shortly after, Kaieteur News reporters ventured to the area where neighbours relived that horrific night. They said that they witnessed the suspect pounding mercilessly on his victim.
A woman, who had run out to help the battered woman, recalled that it was close to midnight and she had just gotten home when she heard loud noises accompanied by the desperate screams of a woman.

The louvre windows through which the Venezuela woman tried to escape her attacker.

The yard in which Semple allegedly beat the woman.

The house where Semple allegedly raped, sodomized and battered the Venezuelan woman.

She said that she rushed out just in time to see the woman plunging through the man’s louvres window.
“The girl ran and tried to go underneath Semple’s car but he pulled her out and started kicking her in her belly,” recounted the woman.
The neighbour related that the man dragged the woman through the yard where he continued to brutally assault her.
The woman remembered shouting at Semple to stop, but he continued beating the woman and responded only with “she try to juk me and thief me money.”
As Semple continued to batter and drag the woman repeatedly through his yard, the neighbour said she decided to seek help.
It was during that moment, the neighbour recalled, that she saw Guyanese Cricketer, Trevon Griffith, driving by and stopped him.
Griffith said that he had actually driven past but reversed to find out what was going on.
As Griffith exited his car, he told reporters, that he was left horrified at what he saw.
“The girl was lying on the concrete ground with Semple on top her, both of them butt naked as he cuffed her repeatedly to the face,” he said.
“I shout at him, boy what you doing that girl?”
“He stood up…I wanted to jump the fence and rescue her but as I was about to do so, I saw the knife in his hand.”
Griffith told reporters too that he considered his decision before making a move. “What if he stabs her and kill her in retaliation.”
The man then turned his attention back to the woman and stamped her to the head repeatedly before entering his home, Griffith recalled.
“I taught he gone to put on a pants and come back, so I called out to her and said run and come to the fence.”
The woman had told Kaieteur News, she was able to garner enough strength to get up off the ground and run towards the fence, which she jumped over to escape.
Griffith recounted grabbing her by the hands and assisting her over the fence after which she collapsed.
By this time other neighbours had arrived at the scene.
They said that she was beaten beyond recognition.
“Her face was bloodied, her eyes were swollen, and she kept blacking out repeatedly,” one of them said.
One woman ran home for a bed sheet, they said, which they used to cover the battered woman’s nakedness.
The police were summoned along with an ambulance. The ranks entered Semple’s yard, called out to him and asked him what was going on, this publication was told. “One of the ranks brought out her clothes and gave them to one of the women attending to her,” said another neighbour.
The rank, they related, instructed that a woman assist Semple’s victim to get dressed before placing her into the ambulance.
Another woman who spoke with Kaieteur News said that as the ambulance drove off with the battered victim, she showed them (the neighbours) a “Thumbs up.”
They further related to reporters that the police did arrest Semple and took him away. Kaieteur News learnt, however, that Semple was subsequently released and had returned to his home. While home, some residents revealed that he threatened to burn down the homes of all those who reported him.
Police clarified yesterday that they had responded to a 911 report that a woman was being beaten by a man in a yard. They denied tossing her clothes at her, but went on to state that they released the man on bail because up to that time they only had a report of an alleged domestic violence.
The angry neighbours said that when they read the Kaieteur News’ lead story published on Monday, they were left dumb founded.
In fact, this was not the first time they have witnessed Semple brutally assaulting a woman at his home, one of them said.
Another added that every night Semple would drive by with a different woman in car.
Others, some of whom live nearby, recounted the nights they would hear loud banging against the walls of his house.
“You would even hear them girls hollering,” a man said.
Nevertheless, the neighbours didn’t bother to intervene much because they taught they were his women.
“Now that this is in the open, now that we know the sick individual he is, we don’t want him living around us; what if he begins to prey on our little teenage daughters, who knows if he might have killed women in the past, in that same house and used his car to dump their bodies,” said a concerned neighbour.