KEVON FELMINE

Se­nior Re­porter

kevon.felmine@guardian.co.tt

Po­lice are search­ing for a home­less Venezue­lan mi­grant sus­pect­ed of stab­bing a man and set­ting a house ablaze dur­ing a vi­o­lent ear­ly-morn­ing at­tack in Rio Claro on Sun­day.

The in­ci­dent oc­curred around 3.30 am at a house along El Gua­napo Trace, where two peo­ple were asleep when they heard some­one call­ing out­side.

Po­lice said the male oc­cu­pant, 59-year-old Urick Joseph, al­so known as Frog­gy, went to in­ves­ti­gate and opened the front door, where he saw a man he knew as Vic­tor, armed with a knife.

The sus­pect al­leged­ly stabbed Joseph sev­er­al times in his body, caus­ing him se­vere in­juries.

A sec­ond oc­cu­pant, a 37-year-old woman, who was al­so in­side the house, ran out through the front door to es­cape the at­tack.

Po­lice said the sus­pect then set the house on fire be­fore flee­ing the area.

Joseph was tak­en to the Rio Claro Health Cen­tre, where he was treat­ed and re­mains in a sta­ble con­di­tion.

A re­port was made to the Rio Claro Po­lice Sta­tion, and of­fi­cers re­spond­ed to the scene. When they ar­rived, they ob­served a wood­en and con­crete struc­ture, ap­prox­i­mate­ly 20 feet by ten feet in size, on fire.

Fire of­fi­cers from the Rio Claro Fire Sta­tion were dis­patched in a fire ten­der and were able to ex­tin­guish the blaze. How­ev­er, the house was com­plete­ly de­stroyed.

Po­lice said the struc­ture had been fit­ted with a wa­ter sup­ply and that sev­er­al ap­pli­ances in­side were burnt.

En­quiries in­to the mat­ter are con­tin­u­ing.