Sascha Wilson
Less than 24 hours after 53-year-old Karen Rauseo complained that she was being physically abused, her battered and bruised body was found yesterday in her apartment.
The mother of two had only moved into the apartment with a close male relative on Monday evening.
Police believe she may have been beaten to death, but they are awaiting the results of an autopsy to confirm the cause of death.
A 59-year-old close male relative, a mason, is assisting police with their investigations.
Police had initially gotten a report of a sudden death at the Buen Intento Road address.
When they arrived the male relative reported that he had left her asleep at the downstairs apartment around 5 am on Tuesday and went to Claxton Bay to work.
He told police that around 5 pm he returned to the apartment and found her body on the floor near the kitchen.
Police observed that Rauseo was clad only in a pair of jeans and there were injuries to her face, left eye, right ear, and chest as well as blood on her ears, nose, and mouth.
Police found a bloodstained orange towel at the apartment.
In an interview, the landlord, Patrick Daniel, who lives upstairs the apartment, said Rauseo worked at a bar and the owner had asked him to rent her the apartment.
He said on Sunday she had cleaned the apartment and on Monday evening she and a man moved into the apartment.
Daniel, a snow cone vendor, said around 7 pm he heard quarreling and as though someone was being beaten.
“I upstairs and I hearing lash. I say whats this boy,” he said.
Daniel said he ran down to the apartment and met her by the door.
He said, “She telling me, this man only beating me, beating me.”
He said Rauseo told him she was going back inside to get her identification to go to the police station to make a report.
Daniel added. “I say alright and I come back upstairs. The place get quiet for five, ten minutes, next thing is start to hear lash and she bawling. I say what the jail is this. Let me call the police.”
In his confusion, however, he dialed 993 instead of 999. Daniel said he did not hear anything again and thought they had “patch up.”
He went to sleep and the following morning he went to work.
Shellyann Jacob, who also lived upstairs, said around 5.30 pm on Tuesday he heard the male relative bawling.
“I hear screaming downstairs, ‘Oh gosh Karen dead, Oh gosh Karen dead when. When I went downstairs her body was lying on the ground partly nude…her face was bleeding, her eyes black and blue.”
She said the male relative was bawling and running up and down the road.
Speaking at their mother’s Indian Walk, Princes Town home, Rauseo’s sister Gail Hospedales said her sister was a victim of domestic violence and they had begged her to end the relationship.
She said before Rauseo moved into the Buen Intento Road apartment, she was renting by a relative’s house near their mother’s home.
She said her sister would be physically abused almost every day.
“We fed up call the police and when the police come they don’t really do nothing. They just talking, telling him whatever, telling she whatever and that’s it, they going. Nuff time we self have to go and rescue her. A night she run out of the house naked as she born good thing my niece was there, they had to run and give her a dress because this man only beating she,” Hospedales claimed.
She said her sister was aware of the candlelight vigils and calls for an end to violence against women following the murder of Andrea Bharatt.
However, her sister never made a report, or applied for a protection order because she was afraid.
Four women have been killed this year, two of them in domestic violence situations.
Meanwhile, 42 women were killed last year, 22 of them were related to domestic violence incidents.
Murder at same apt 20 years ago
While residents expressed shock and horror over the incident, they recalled a similar incident at the same apartment over 20 years ago.
Is like deja vu. The same thing happened in the same spot same house,” said resident Daveindra Chinsammy.
He said the couple had been renting the same apartment and the woman was killed.
“For a year maybe people talk about it because it was a big incident because things like that don’t happen around here,” Chinsammy said.
Chinsammy believes that domestic violence and violence against women are rooted in a poor upbringing.