Hours after her husband died at the Sangre Grande Hospital after being treated for ingesting poison, Lisa Ramkissoon said she too has more questions than answers.
Speaking to Guardian Media at her Sangre Grande home last evening, Ramkissoon said her husband of seven years, 48-year-old police constable Alvin Ramkissoon, was hospitalised on Friday night. She said he became ill after eating food he had brought home. He was treated by doctors for ingestion of a poisonous substance and warded in the Intensive Care Unit of the hospital. However, Alvin died around 11 pm on Monday.
Recalling yesterday her last moments with him before he fell ill, Ramkissoon said he asked her if she wanted some of the soup and bar-b-que chicken meal he had brought home.
“He come home, take off he shoes, take off he pants, take off he shirt and put it on the chair. I was sitting right there by the front door in a chair and he call me and say ‘Babe, you coming to eat with me?’ I say where you get the food, he never answer. I say well I don’t want no food from you if you can’t tell me where you get the food,” she said.
Ramkissoon, 51, said Alvin gave a piece of the bar-b-que chicken to another man who was sitting with them. Shortly after, Alvin began shaking violently in his chair.
“I was sitting down in the hammock in the back and I realise he shaking, I get up and come and ask him ‘Babe what happen?’ he say ‘Nothing’ so I go back outside and sit down. Is when he start to do like this (gestures with her hands) I run from the hammock and I come and say ‘Babe what happen?’ All he could have said was ‘aaaaah, aaaaah’,” she said.
She said Alvin soiled himself and while she was cleaning him she tried calling an ambulance but got no answer from the emergency number. She said she then called Alvin’s brother to take him to the hospital.
“When I reach up to the hospital, when they carry him inside the room, his heart had stopped beating and he had no pulse and they were trying to bring him back and then the doctor came and tell me he might not make it.”
Ramkissoon said she spent the next several days at his bedside, praying for him to recover.
When he died, however, Ramkissoon said several of his relatives began accusing her of poisoning him.
“Somebody give him the food because he didn’t buy it … somewhere he get it, for me to say where I really cannot. I would love to bring closure to this nonsense but I cannot,” she said.
However, she has a suspect in mind herself. She said about a month ago, she discovered messages on Alvin’s phone between him and a woman. She said she confronted him about the messages and he remained silent. She replayed one of the voice notes between Alvin and the woman. The woman was heard offering to make Alvin breakfast when he picked her up. Ramkissoon believes the same woman made the soup Alvin ate on Friday.
But while she said his unfaithfulness hurt her, she said they did not fight over it.
“I talk to him about it but we never had no animosity, or quarrel, or fight, or nothing, we sleeping together as normal.”
However, she said since last December, Alvin had stopped going out with her or associating with her in public because of his relatives.
“They (his relatives) tell me flat in my face, they don’t want him eating from me, they don’t want him drinking nothing from me, they don’t want to see him nowhere with me, they don’t want me washing clothes for him, so in a few months’ time they could make him go and file for a divorce so I have no proof that I was being a wife to him,” Ramkissoon claimed.
But she said Alvin never asked for a divorce nor a separation.
“They telling everybody I poison him but I say my heart clean and my conscience clear, he didn’t take no food from home, he come home with he food and he didn’t even drink water here,” she said.
She said Alvin was a nice, quiet person who loved to make others laugh. The two had no children together but Alvin was a father of five, she said.
Ramkissoon said although she was frustrated, she did not want to walk away from her marriage.
“I have no regret about staying with him. My one request is I wish people would stop saying nasty things on Facebook, it disturbing, distasteful, despicable,” she said.
Friday was not the first time Alvin fell ill in such a manner. Ramkissoon said he was admitted to hospital in February and early June with similar symptoms.
The February incident was linked to a heart issue, she said, but an insecticide was suspected after the June incident.
“They said it was something to do with something they does spray for ants or something...we don’t have ants here, we don’t have cockroach, we don’t have flea, we don’t have tick…nothing.”
Ramkissoon said police have searched her home several times but like them, she too will have to wait until an autopsy is done tomorrow to determine what caused Alvin’s death.
