Blaming herself for the deaths of several relatives within the last two years due to an ongoing family dispute over a six-acre parcel of land at O’Connor Street, Blanchisseuse, Lynette Evangelist yesterday said she was considering selling the land, which she said is cursed.
The 72-year-old pensioner said the contentious matter had so far cost her three grandsons and one son, with the most recent killing having occurred on Saturday morning.
Carver Evangelist, 50, was shot in the back of the head by a gunman around 7.10 am, as he sat under a sapodilla tree higher up the street from his home.
Evangelist’s son, Sherwin Maharaj, 31, was killed on February 17, 2021, as he took a soft drink to a relative near his house.
The former lifeguard was ambushed in the same manner as his father and shot in the back of the head near an abandoned house on the street.
Also, Maharaj’s brother Mitchell Evangelist, 31, was killed along with Nigel Dedier, 51, on January 26, as they worked on a construction site along the Blanchisseuse Main Road.
A third grandson died under mysterious circumstances shortly after Maharaj’s murder in 2021.
Speaking with reporters after identifying Carver’s body at the Forensic Science Centre in St James yesterday, Lynette cried as she admitted, “I don’t know how to go on, I don’t know how to cope.”
Grieving over this latest loss, she said, “If I had never ask these people to be on the land, my son would have still been alive.”
Lynette added, “It is I who let him bring those demons in that place. And when they finish...you see how they turn around and wreck my family?”
She accused other relatives of wanting the land so badly, that they were willing to kill her entire family for it.
“They kill my two grandchildren and they kill my son who never did them anything. He never took anything from them,” she added.
Angry and upset over what she described as a colossal failure by the police to protect Carver Evangelist who had filed more than 50 reports of death threats against his suspected killers, Lynette said, “The police have failed miserably.”
She aid while her remaining family are now living in fear, she would act to ensure their safety.
She promised, “With the last bit of breath in my body, I will make sure they cannot get that land. I wish all of them burn in hell.”
Asked what she intended to do, she said, “I figure when I talk to my children, I’ll know if to sell the house and land with everybody on it and let them fight with the new owner or what. I really don’t know yet.”
Referring to the three suspects who are all relatives and were apprehended by police as they escaped the area using the Arima Old Road hours after Carver’s killing, Lynette claimed, “It was family who kill family.”
Indicating she was no longer afraid, she said, “Let them come for me if they want. I have had it cause when you look at it, it’s family who doing it and people running their dirty mouth and talking about what they don’t know about.”
She wiped tears saying, “I am tired of the situation. When you realise it’s your family and how ungrateful they all are, it is very hurtful.”
Asked if she and her family would be willing to sit around a table and hash out the matter to avoid further bloodshed, she said, “The talking done. It’s not happening, not around this table in this life. Not after my two grandsons and now my son. God have to come and tell me personally, but I done cause it don’t have anything to fix.”
