Shar­lene Ram­per­sad

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.