Jensen La Vende

The de­sire to be the best in her stud­ies may have caused 16-year-old Rachael Ramkissoon to wake up late yes­ter­day morn­ing af­ter study­ing the night be­fore and as a re­sult she missed the school bus.

The teen, a fourth Form A stu­dent of North East­ern Col­lege, left her Tal­paro Trace, Brazil home with the in­ten­tion of writ­ing an ex­am. The as­pir­ing lawyer af­ter re­al­is­ing she missed the bus tele­phones a friend on the bus to beg the dri­ver to wait for her. He did not.

Rel­a­tives who spoke to the me­dia at the San Raphael Po­lice Sta­tion last night said she was not the type to trav­el with strangers and may have stopped a dri­ver she knew from the area to take her to school. So ded­i­cat­ed she was to her school work that she wrote two CXC sub­jects, Math and Eng­lish and at­tained dis­tinc­tions in both. Dur­ing the Christ­mas va­ca­tion, fam­i­ly limes and out­ings were side­lined for stud­ies and re­vis­ing.

Most re­cent­ly, on Sun­day, her great aunt, In­ga Bo­cas, begged Ramkissoon, an on­ly child to her moth­er, to go to the beach with the fam­i­ly be­fore Bo­cas re­turns to Puer­to Ri­co but was trumped by study time.

Bo­cas said the aim of the "lit­tle an­gel" was to study to be­come a lawyer and get her fam­i­ly out of pover­ty.

"I want this preda­tor to be ar­rest­ed or killed or chopped up in jail. How could you kill an in­no­cent child an an­gel like that? She would nev­er go with any and any one and she didn't have a boyfriend so it is not that she was plan­ning to run away, she was go­ing to school" an irate Bo­cas said.

Po­lice re­ports stat­ed that around 1.30 pm a hunter found the teen face up in a forest­ed area near Bal­a­ta Trace, Are­na and con­tact­ed them. Po­lice be­lieve the teen was stran­gled as there were no blood or marks of vi­o­lence on the body. While po­lice nei­ther con­firmed nor de­nied the re­port, rel­a­tives claimed Ramkissoon was sex­u­al­ly as­sault­ed. Po­lice said they are await­ing the re­sults of an au­top­sy on Mon­day to say how she died.

Of­fi­cers of the San Raphael Po­lice Sta­tions were seen coun­selling the fam­i­ly who gath­ered as news be­gan spread­ing of her killing.

Rel­a­tives were on­ly made aware that she didn't not ar­rive safe­ly at school when a cousin of hers who lives near­by and at­tends the same school came home and told them Ramkissoon nev­er made it to school. Fran­tic rel­a­tives called her cell­phone which at the time had been switched off. Some made their way to the San Raphael Po­lice Sta­tion where they were told that a child fit­ting Ramkissoon's's de­scrip­tion was found. With­in min­utes dis­traught rel­a­tives be­gan as­sem­bling the car park of the po­lice sta­tion. One of­fi­cer lament­ed that it was a sad day for the coun­try.

Ramkissoon is the first fe­male and youngest per­son to be killed for the year. She will be record­ed as mur­der vic­tim 15. Last year, for the same pe­ri­od there were 21 mur­ders.