Jensen La Vende

Bur­glar proof­ing in­stalled to keep ban­dits out, trapped a home­own­er in­side her burn­ing house on Wednes­day, re­sult­ing in her death.

Po­lice said Dhan­matie Anee­sha Rad­hoo, a moth­er of three, died as a re­sult of smoke in­hala­tion and heart fail­ure.

Rad­hoo's cousin, Ex­press' se­nior po­lit­i­cal re­porter An­na Ram­dass, post­ed on Face­book her cousin was raped ten years ago at her home and af­ter the in­ci­dent the fam­i­ly in­stalled bur­glar proof­ing at the house lo­cat­ed in St He­le­na Vil­lage, Pi­ar­co.

In her Face­book post, Ram­dass wrote: "My cousin died tonight. My be­ing can­not ac­cept this loss. Tell me this is a night­mare. Tell me that when the sun ris­es she will get up to take her daugh­ters–An­geli­na, 9 and Nao­mi, 7–to school.

"Tell me the body I saw tonight at the hos­pi­tal was not hers. Tell me there was no fire, that she was not trapped be­hind bur­glar proof win­dows and doors, that the burnt flesh I saw was not re­al. That it's un­true, the taps were dry and not a drop of wa­ter to kill the flames."

She de­scribed the house­wife as a "giv­er in life" who suf­fered in the past decade hav­ing sur­vived the as­sault in 2006 and most re­cent­ly a car ac­ci­dent.

"She was self­less, lov­ing and de­spite her pain she gave and gave and gave. My heart hurts...she loved me so much, she's gone now and I wish I had more time to re­turn the love that em­bod­ied her spir­it. This sim­ply can­not be," Ram­dass stat­ed.

Ac­cord­ing to po­lice, around 11 pm Wednes­day night fire of­fi­cials re­ceived a re­port of a fire at the Rad­hoo's res­i­dence. Rad­hoo, who turned 43 last June, was trapped in­side.

Fire and po­lice of­fi­cials even­tu­al­ly res­cued her and took her to the Er­ic Williams Med­ical Sci­ences Cen­tre where she died.

Ram­dass added Rad­hoo's rel­a­tives and neigh­bours were forced to look on help­less­ly as fire de­stroyed the home as there was no wa­ter in the taps for a buck­et brigade.

She said fire of­fi­cials from the Tu­na­puna Fire Sta­tion took at least an hour to ar­rive and when rel­a­tives of Rad­hoo went to the Pi­ar­co sub-sta­tion based at the Pi­ar­co In­ter­na­tion­al Air­port beg­ging for as­sis­tance they were turned away.

Up to press time there was no cause for the blaze and fire of­fi­cials have es­ti­mat­ed the dam­ages to be at least $600,000.