An­na-Lisa Paul

Se­nior Re­porter

an­na-lisa.paul@guardian.co.tt

Rel­a­tives of Avanelle Abra­ham are strug­gling to come to terms with the cir­cum­stances sur­round­ing her mur­der in Ch­agua­nas on Sun­day, while urg­ing the pub­lic to be more dis­cern­ing about the com­pa­ny they keep and the peo­ple they trust.

Abra­ham, 38, of Lange Park, Ch­agua­nas, was shot in the head and thrown from a car along Maraj Street in Mon­trose, Ch­agua­nas, around 4 pm. She had been em­ployed with Massy Mo­tors in Pi­ar­co but was on sick leave at the time of her death.

An au­top­sy at the Foren­sic Sci­ence Cen­tre (FSC) in St James yes­ter­day con­firmed that the moth­er of a 15-year-old boy died from a gun­shot wound to the head.

Rel­a­tives re­vealed that Abra­ham had re­cent­ly opened a hair sa­lon in Ch­agua­nas and had been work­ing hard to im­prove her­self both fi­nan­cial­ly and aca­d­e­m­i­cal­ly. They said they strong­ly be­lieve she left home to meet some­one she knew.

While they have not ruled out rob­bery as a mo­tive—her sil­ver Kia Cer­a­to and cell­phone re­main miss­ing—one rel­a­tive qui­et­ly re­marked, “I don’t think so.”

“This is a dif­fer­ent time we are liv­ing in. Some men can’t take re­jec­tion at all. If they feel a lit­tle dis­re­spect­ed, that’s it. Life means noth­ing at all,” a rel­a­tive said.

Al­though they spoke to re­porters at the FSC, fam­i­ly mem­bers re­quest­ed anonymi­ty, say­ing the killer or killers re­main at large.

Abra­ham’s life, they said, re­volved around her son. In ad­di­tion to man­ag­ing her sa­lon and study­ing, she was a tal­ent­ed artist, in­te­ri­or and event dec­o­ra­tor, and had al­so worked as a dri­ver with TT RideShare (TTRS).

“She was a lov­ing and hard-work­ing moth­er,” rel­a­tives said. As the el­dest of three daugh­ters, Abra­ham was de­scribed as a “moth­er­ly fig­ure” to her sib­lings and some­one who ra­di­at­ed “pos­i­tive en­er­gy.”

Full of am­bi­tion and goals, the fam­i­ly said she was al­ways pre­cise in her de­ci­sions. “She was a straight-to-the-point per­son. If she said this is what she was do­ing, that’s what she was do­ing. High qual­i­ty, high stan­dards. See­ing her bare­foot, we know that was def­i­nite­ly some­one close by. She al­ways kept her­self look­ing well and put to­geth­er.”

Rel­a­tives said Abra­ham had told her son ear­li­er in the day that she would be at home. While they do not know if she was on a date, her ca­su­al at­tire sug­gest­ed some­thing in­for­mal.

The fam­i­ly ex­pressed shock and hurt at the re­sponse on so­cial me­dia, where pic­tures of Abra­ham went vi­ral min­utes af­ter she was thrown from the ve­hi­cle. “Peo­ple were tak­ing pic­tures and didn’t even both­er to call an am­bu­lance. This is the scary thing about so­ci­ety now. In­stead of try­ing to save a life, every­body is quick to record what’s hap­pen­ing,” one rel­a­tive said.

They al­so crit­i­cised the late po­lice re­sponse, claim­ing of­fi­cers did not ar­rive at the scene un­til about 30 min­utes af­ter the shoot­ing.

Two church­es have re­port­ed­ly reached out to of­fer coun­selling to the trau­ma­tised fam­i­ly and Abra­ham’s son. Guardian Me­dia learned that her son had been plan­ning to sur­prise his moth­er af­ter work­ing with his fa­ther over the week­end to earn ex­tra cash.

Fight­ing back tears, one rel­a­tive said, “He was her world.” Like his moth­er, the teenag­er is a tal­ent­ed free-hand artist with a bright fu­ture ahead.

A rel­a­tive who saw Abra­ham last Wednes­day said she ap­peared nor­mal, un­afraid and un­both­ered. When asked if Abra­ham had ex­pressed con­cerns about ha­rass­ment or stalk­ing, the rel­a­tive said Abra­ham had been sin­gle and un­afraid of con­fronta­tion.

“She would run in­to trou­ble,” the rel­a­tive said, re­call­ing that years ago Abra­ham had jumped from a maxi dur­ing a rob­bery and chased down the gun­man. “She was a fight­er. She was not the type to let any­body walk over her.”

Abra­ham’s fam­i­ly urged young women to ex­er­cise dis­cern­ment when choos­ing part­ners or friends.

“They need to be very care­ful be­cause some­times we may think we know peo­ple, but not to the ex­tent we may want to know them,” they said.