Shastri Boodan
A Couva man is dead and three others were hospitalised after their home was firebombed on Wednesday morning.
Dead is Tyrone Foster, 25, a terminal worker on the Point Lisas Industrial Estate. Foster, who is also known as Stephon, succumbed to injuries while trying to escape from a fire at his home at Anand Yankaran Extension Street at the HDC Exchange housing development sometime after 3 am.
Lester Foster, his uncle, was burnt badly and taken along with Layla Richards, girlfriend of the deceased, and Lorna Cuffie, the mother of the deceased, to the San Fernando General Hospital for treatment. In a phone interview, a friend of Lorna, who was with her at the hospital, said she was unable to speak and was in excruciating pain.
Pensioner Rocky Daniel, who lives in a duplex over the road from the deceased, said he believed that a Molotov cocktail was tossed into the first floor of Foster's duplex.
Daniel said, “I was upstairs and I hear boom as if somebody pelt something, by the time I look outside, I see the house on fire so and I ran downstairs, open the door, put on the light and I grabbed the hose and started to run with the hose and started to throw water. Tyron was by the door and bawling Rocky…Rocky. When I reached the house, I was getting a problem with water from the pump.”
Daniel said neighbours joined in the attempt to douse the flame before the Fire Service arrived around 10 minutes later. However, they could not save Foster, who could not make it through the burglar-proof doors and windows.
Another neighbor Stephenson Ramlochan, 57, said last December the family was attacked and their house was stoned down. He said the assailants broke several windows in the house and pelted a white Tiida motor vehicle that was parked in the yard.
Ramlochan said the area is a quiet one and he doesn’t know why the family was attacked. The body was removed around 5 am. The scene was visited by investigators from the T&T Fire Service, the Chaguanas Police and staff of the Couva South MP's office.