Motive remains unclear in Couva spa double murder

KEVON FELMINE

Se­nior Re­porter

[email protected]

Homi­cide de­tec­tives are yet to de­ter­mine whether a masked gun­man who killed two women at a Cou­va beau­ty spa on Wednes­day came look­ing for one of them or de­lib­er­ate­ly tar­get­ed both.

Po­lice said yes­ter­day that no one had been held or ques­tioned in con­nec­tion with the mur­ders of spa own­er Kavi­ta De­osaran, 55, and cus­tomer Cheryl Dixon, 67.

In­ves­ti­ga­tors have not es­tab­lished a mo­tive and are con­tin­u­ing en­quiries in­to the killings.

How­ev­er, Dixon’s younger sis­ter, Su­san Hospedales, be­lieves her sis­ter was not the gun­man’s in­tend­ed tar­get. She said Dixon had told her ear­li­er that morn­ing that she was get­ting her hair done be­fore head­ing to her busi­ness.

“We are not safe any­where,” she said.

The shoot­ing hap­pened around 9.20 am at SO­HO Beau­ty Haven, on the first floor of Vener­is Plaza, at the cor­ner of the South­ern Main Road and Char­lotte Street.

Ini­tial re­ports state a masked gun­man in a blue over­all en­tered, asked Dixon about the ve­hi­cle she was dri­ving and shot her. De­osaran tried to run, but he chased her and shot her.

CCTV footage showed the shoot­er leav­ing the build­ing and get­ting on­to a mo­tor­cy­cle rid­den by an­oth­er per­son.

Crime scene in­ves­ti­ga­tors re­cov­ered 14 spent shells and five pro­jec­tiles. No one else was in­jured.

The Cou­va Point Lisas Cham­ber of Com­merce con­demned the mur­ders in a me­dia re­lease, warn­ing that crime and vi­o­lence threat­en cit­i­zens and the busi­ness com­mu­ni­ty.

It urged the T&T Po­lice Ser­vice to in­crease pa­trols and vis­i­bil­i­ty and strength­en se­cu­ri­ty across Cou­va, Point Lisas and sur­round­ing com­mer­cial dis­tricts.

Mean­while, Cou­va Po­lice Sta­tion Com­mu­ni­ty Coun­cil pres­i­dent Bish­op Ezekiel Clarke de­scribed the killings as heart­break­ing and said he was con­fi­dent Cou­va po­lice and homi­cide de­tec­tives would solve the case.