sto­ries by Sascha Wil­son

Grief and hor­ror have gripped two fam­i­lies and a Princes Town com­mu­ni­ty has been left in shock af­ter a cou­ple hanged them­selves in the pres­ence of their nine-year-old daugh­ter on Sat­ur­day. 

Un­able to come to terms with the tragedy, the rel­a­tives of Steve Jug­mo­han, 40, said they had no in­di­ca­tion that Jug­mo­han and his com­mon-law-wife Shar­lene Ramkissoon, 38, were un­der that de­gree of dis­tress.

They be­lieve that the cou­ple may have been ex­pe­ri­enc­ing fi­nan­cial woes. Jug­mo­han and Ramkissoon record­ed a video in front of their daugh­ter in which they spoke about what they were go­ing to do and asked their rel­a­tives to take care of their chil­dren.

Jug­mo­han al­so record­ed a sec­ond video, but none of the videos showed their deaths, po­lice said.

The cou­ple had been in a re­la­tion­ship for about ten years and lived down­stairs Jug­mo­han’s fam­i­ly’s home at La Paille Road.

The cou­ple’s oth­er child, a five-year-old boy, was born with a hole in his heart.

For­tu­nate­ly, he was with Jug­mo­han’s rel­a­tives who live up­stairs in the house.

Judg­mo­han’s oth­er daugh­ter, a 16-year-old girl from a pre­vi­ous re­la­tion­ship, al­so lived up­stairs while Ramkissoon’s two oth­er sons live with their fa­ther in the Unit­ed States.

Try­ing to con­tain her emo­tions, Jug­mo­han’s old­er sis­ter Sharon said around 11.50 am her niece came up­stairs and told her that her par­ents had hanged them­selves.

“She say aun­ty, aun­ty come mum­my and dad­dy hang them­selves I say what you say­ing girl. She say yes aun­ty come and see.”

Sharon said when she went down­stairs she saw Ramkissoon on the ground in the bed­room and her broth­er hang­ing from the ceil­ing in the bath­room.

“I start to shake so I just run out back. I ran back to my mom and said, ‘It’s true, it’s true’.”

Sharon said she called the po­lice and they told her not the touch any­thing.

She asked the of­fi­cer to call the Emer­gency Health Ser­vices (EHS) am­bu­lance be­cause she wasn’t sure if her sis­ter-in-law was dead.

When the am­bu­lance ar­rived, she said they wait­ed un­til the po­lice came be­cause they were not sure if it was a homi­cide. While she heard that there may be two videos, Sharon said she on­ly saw one of them.

“The video just state that they were in prob­lems and they ask for help and no­body helped them. (They ask) the two grand­par­ents to take care of the chil­dren and what­ev­er they have is for the chil­dren,” she said.

Ramkissoon said the cou­ple nev­er con­fid­ed in any­one about their prob­lems, but she re­alised some­thing was wrong when he sold two of his ve­hi­cles.

“Re­cent­ly he sold some of the ve­hi­cles and asked him what go­ing on why it is he sell­ing out the stuff and he just said that ap­par­ent­ly the girl was in some prob­lems and he had to help her but he nev­er give de­tails as to what it is. They use to keep to them­selves,” she said.

Sharon added that Jug­mo­han did not have a steady job and her sis­ter-in-law worked in a Play Whe booth.

She said her moth­er has a maxi which Jug­mo­han was sup­posed to be work­ing, but he did more pri­vate jobs.

She is wor­ried about the chil­dren, par­tic­u­lar­ly her niece who has not re­al­ly talked to them about what she saw or the in­ci­dent.

How­ev­er, she said Ag Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er Mc­Don­ald Ja­cob vis­it­ed them on Sat­ur­day and promised to arrange coun­selling for the chil­dren.

“She was in the video that they made so is some­thing she not ready to talk but the Com­mis­sion­er was here and he said he would send coun­selling for her and he will look in­to the mat­ter to have some­thing done for the chil­dren to help them with the sit­u­a­tion,” she re­called. Sharon said words can­not de­scribe how they are feel­ing. How could words de­scribe that to ac­tu­al­ly walk in (on) your broth­er hang­ing...not some­thing that words can de­scribe,” she said.

While at the house, Ramkissoon’s moth­er and sis­ter ar­rived, but they de­clined to com­ment.

Coun­cil­lor Shawn Prem­c­hand said the com­mu­ni­ty is in shock over the cou­ple’s death as well as the mur­der of Vishal Ramjohn who lived not far away from the cou­ple’s home.

Ex­tend­ing con­do­lences to the fam­i­lies, he said, “The au­thor­i­ties re­al­ly need to get in­volved, es­pe­cial­ly in this case where a child is in­volved. Maybe we could have through the Min­istry of So­cial De­vel­op­ment, we could have some­body who could come and as­sist, maybe with ther­a­py or in what­ev­er way they could,” said Prem­c­hand.

At­tempts to reach Ja­cob on his cell­phone were un­suc­cess­ful.

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