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Apr 13, 2013 News
By Dale Andrews
The shocking murder of an 89-year-old woman has incensed the usually quiet community of Cove and John, East Coast Demerara.
The semi nude body of Millicent Adriana Cummings, called “Baby Prince”, was discovered around 05:45 hours yesterday in a yard beneath an abandoned house on the Cove and John Public Road.
Her head was swollen, signs of a brutal beating, while there is some evidence that suggests that she was sexually assaulted. Her top was rolled up while a half slip was lying next to the body.
Reports are that Cummings, who would have celebrated her 90th birthday next week Sunday (April 21), left her home early yesterday morning for her usual daily exercise and was confronted just a few yards away.
Police believe that the elderly woman was dragged into the yard where she was partially stripped of her clothing and brutally assaulted.
There were signs of a struggle, since Cummings’ hat and a pair of slippers were found outside the yard, on the parapet, a few yards from where her body lay.
“No matter she age, she would fight back,” a family member remarked at the scene.
Kaieteur News understands that a man who lives at the back of the yard where Cummings’ body was discovered, was on his way to work when he saw her lying motionless in a pool of blood.
The man immediately contacted the nearby Cove and John Police Station.
But although the man is not considered a suspect, he and his family were detained to assist with the investigations.
Police so far have no clear motive for the murder nor do they have a suspect in mind.
However relatives and villagers alike believe that Cummings met her death at the hands of someone from the very community in which she lived.
“It had to be somebody who know that she does walk early in de morning, and that person had to know that this house abandon,” a relative of the dead woman told Kaieteur News.
Kenneth Prince, a great nephew of the dead woman, lives two doors away from where she was killed.
He told Kaieteur News that he was asleep when a friend who lives with him woke him up with the tragic news.
“He say come and see this thing. I got up and I see him going into this yard, so I followed him. I saw the woman and I told him that it was my great aunt and I felt her and she was cold,” Prince told this newspaper.
He said he then informed other relatives.
According to Prince, nothing had prepared him for what happened yesterday morning.
“Where I does lie down, I normally hear any sound on the road, but I did not hear anything.”
Prince informed this publication that even the security guard at the Cove and John Primary School, which is situated opposite the crime scene, is claiming that he heard nothing.
Prince said that it was not strange for Cummings to be out of her house in the wee hours of the morning.
“Sometimes she would come around here about two o’clock and I would take her upstairs to sleep here. But that doesn’t mean that she had to die like this,” Prince explained.
He stated that so far relatives have no clue as to who could have done such a ghastly act.
“We can’t judge nobody,” he declared.
Detectives combed the crime scene for any piece of evidence that could provide them with clues to the murder.
They dusted a couple of empty rum bottles found in a room of the abandoned house for possible fingerprints.
They also searched a section of the adjoining cemetery for any sign of the murder weapon which is believed to be a blunt object.
“Look like she got three blows to her head,” a crime scene detective told this newspaper.
So incensed were residents that they agreed with one villager who stated “whoever do dis shouldn’t get charge; dey should be handed over to the public for us to deal with them.”
As news of Cummings’s death spread throughout the village, scores of residents, most of whom were heading to work, took time out to flock the crime scene for a glimpse of the body.
Cummings leaves to mourn her only son.
She is one of a growing list of elderly females murdered under mysterious circumstances in Guyana within the past four years.
Kharpattie Shivnauth and Rajkumarie Mahadeo, Prampattie Ramsundar, Khirul Najidam and Sukhdai Ramkilaum were all murdered between 2009 and 2011.
Except for two of them, all the others are from East Coast Demerara. And not surprising, none of these murders have been solved.
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