Two women killed in brazen attack at Couva spa

Sascha Wil­son

Se­nior Re­porter

sascha.wil­[email protected]

A Cou­va spa be­came the scene of a dou­ble mur­der yes­ter­day morn­ing when a masked gun­man shot dead a cus­tomer and the busi­ness own­er in front of oth­er cus­tomers and em­ploy­ees be­fore flee­ing on a mo­tor­cy­cle.

Cheryl Dixon, 67, of Cou­va, and Kavi­ta De­osaran, 55, own­er of SO­HO Beau­ty Haven, were killed in­side the busi­ness on the first floor of Vener­is Plaza, at the cor­ner of the South­ern Main Road and Char­lotte Street, Cou­va.

Guardian Me­dia un­der­stands that Dixon, a busi­ness­woman and reg­u­lar cus­tomer of the spa, had stopped there to get her hair done be­fore head­ing to her own busi­ness. An­oth­er cus­tomer and sev­er­al work­ers, in­clud­ing a preg­nant em­ploy­ee, were in­side when the masked gun­man, dressed in a blue over­all, en­tered the premis­es. He re­port­ed­ly con­front­ed both women and spoke to them briefly be­fore shoot­ing Dixon. An ini­tial re­port stat­ed that the gun­man had asked Dixon what car she was dri­ving.

De­osaran then ran in an at­tempt to es­cape, but the gun­man chased her and shot her. CCTV footage showed the shoot­er leav­ing the build­ing via the steps be­fore get­ting on­to a mo­tor­cy­cle dri­ven by an­oth­er per­son. The plaza hous­es about ten busi­ness­es, in­clud­ing a school for chil­dren with spe­cial needs. For­tu­nate­ly, no one else was in­jured. A man who said he heard the gun­shots de­scribed the in­ci­dent as fright­en­ing.

“This is crazy, just last night they killed the lawyer, and now this. What is go­ing on?” he lament­ed.

Crime scene in­ves­ti­ga­tors re­cov­ered 14 spent shells and five pro­jec­tiles at the scene.

Griev­ing rel­a­tives of both women gath­ered out­side the build­ing, com­fort­ing one an­oth­er as they wait­ed for the bod­ies to be re­moved by un­der­tak­ers.

Dixon’s younger sis­ter, Su­san Hospedales, said she did not be­lieve her sis­ter was the in­tend­ed tar­get. Hospedales said Dixon had spo­ken to her daugh­ter ear­li­er that morn­ing and told her she was go­ing to get her hair done be­fore head­ing to her busi­ness.

Lament­ing that nowhere was safe, Hospedales said the news of her sis­ter’s killing was dif­fi­cult to com­pre­hend.

“Hear­ing this news, it is very shock­ing, un­be­liev­able. We are not safe any­where. If you come to do your hair and you are get­ting shot, that’s ter­ri­ble,” she said. Hospedales said Dixon’s hus­band and daugh­ter were al­so at the scene. Dixon’s oth­er daugh­ter lives abroad.

She de­scribed her sis­ter as hard­work­ing, dis­ci­plined, de­ter­mined and out­spo­ken. Hop­ing for jus­tice, Hospedales had a mes­sage for those re­spon­si­ble for her sis­ter’s death. “Lives do not be­long to you, so you should not take lives like that. It is God’s will to take your life. You can­not go around shoot­ing in­no­cent peo­ple,” she said.

De­osaran’s two sons were among the rel­a­tives gath­ered at the scene, but they de­clined to com­ment.

In a sub­se­quent post on the com­pa­ny’s Face­book page, De­osaran’s fam­i­ly asked for pri­va­cy and un­der­stand­ing dur­ing what it de­scribed as an “in­cred­i­bly dif­fi­cult pe­ri­od” fol­low­ing a “dev­as­tat­ing loss”. De­osaran was the daugh­ter of Cen­tral san­i­ta­tion con­trac­tor Jawahirlal De­osaran. In 2004, one of her broth­ers was kid­napped and a $10 mil­lion ran­som was de­mand­ed.

In 2012, a fire oc­curred at the fam­i­ly’s man­sion in Cara­pichari­ma.

Mean­while, Cou­va Po­lice Sta­tion Com­mu­ni­ty Coun­cil pres­i­dent Bish­op Ezekiel Clarke de­scribed the mur­ders as heart­break­ing and ex­tend­ed con­do­lences to the be­reaved fam­i­lies. Clarke ex­pressed con­fi­dence that Cou­va po­lice and the Homi­cide In­ves­ti­ga­tions team would work dili­gent­ly to solve the case.

“Every life is pre­cious. Let us con­tin­ue to pro­mote peace, uni­ty, and pos­i­tiv­i­ty through­out our com­mu­ni­ties,” he said.

Of­fi­cers of the Homi­cide Bu­reau of In­ves­ti­ga­tions, Re­gion Three, were still try­ing to es­tab­lish a mo­tive for the killings last evening.