Police officers from the Tobago Division are conducting investigations into an attack on a landlady and a family member by a tenant and his wife following a rent and contract breach dispute.
According to Tobago’s police media ambassador Acting Inspector Alicia Piggott, “a calypsonian who owns a hardware store in Bon Accord and his wife” allegedly attacked the landlady and another member of her family, “dousing her with a substance on Thursday evening at the business.”
The landlady, who has been identified as Sobah Samuel, is currently being treated at the Scarborough Hospital.
Piggott said the altercation allegedly occurred after the landlady spoke to the calypsonian about constructing a wall for his business on the leased land earlier in the week.
She said the matter came to a head on Thursday when Samuel and her relative turned up at the construction site. It was then the substance was allegedly thrown on the landlady. The calypsonian’s wife is also accused by police of beating the landlady, the inspector said.
Guardian Media spoke to Samuel via telephone at the hospital yesterday afternoon.
Recounting the ordeal, she said when the substance touched her skin, it burned.
Samuel said people who were at the site, on seeing what happened, began soaking her skin with water and health authorities continued doing so when she arrived at the hospital to prevent further burns. She said her clothing stuck to parts of her skin.
“This is an ongoing situation with this tenant that began in 2017. Since then, I have been sending legal notices to the tenant to vacate the land, but he got Mr (a lawyer named) to write me back, and the tenant never left. He just kept expanding the structure until he began building a wall,” the woman claimed.
Crown Point police arrested the calypsonian, who is well known in Tobago, along with this wife shortly after the incident.
Up to yesterday evening, the couple remained in police custody.