RAD­HI­CA DE SIL­VA

rad­hi­ca.sookraj@guardian.co.tt

Four peo­ple are now home­less af­ter a fire de­stroyed two hous­es at La Ro­maine, dur­ing the ear­ly hours of this morn­ing.

Among those left home­less are Bri­an Bran­ka, 61, Christo­pher Bran­ka, 60, and Yas­mine Mo­hammed, 50, all of South­ern Main Road, La Ro­maine, as well as their neigh­bour Pamela Teelucks­ingh.

Po­lice said the Bran­ka and Mo­hammed fam­i­lies went to bed around 8 pm on Wednes­day (April 12), but short­ly be­fore 3 am to­day, they awoke to the smell of smoke. They then saw fire com­ing from the west­ern side of their house.

In­ves­ti­ga­tors said three of the oc­cu­pants re­ceived mi­nor in­juries as they fled the fire. How­ev­er, even though they man­aged to get out of the burn­ing house, they could not save it.

The fire con­tin­ued to spread, ig­nit­ing Teelucks­ingh's house. She told po­lice she too was asleep when she saw the fire com­ing from her wash­ing area on the ground floor. The flames then spread to the sec­ond storey of the house.

Fire­fight­ers from the Mon Re­pos Fire Head­quar­ters, led by FS­SO Jack­son, re­spond­ed to the fire and man­aged to ex­tin­guish the fire.

Of­fi­cers from the San Fer­nan­do CID, in­clud­ing PCs Ja­groop, Fi­ga­roo and Cabera, were on the scene to­day, car­ry­ing out in­quiries.

Guardian Me­dia will up­date this sto­ry as more in­for­ma­tion comes to hand.