| – Diamond mother tells how she ended up in a relationship with a man who has caused her sons to be locked up for manslaughter By Neil MarksLatchmin is still seething with anger and despair, and the few chances she has for joy are restrained.Her admitted “shine eye” led her into a relationship with a man who saw her during one of her visits to the country’s main prison. What followed was “life at hell’s gate”; a period of abuse by the very man pushed her two sons and a cousin behind bars.Latchmin Looking back at the violent confrontation of February 5, 2006, in which her two sons and a cousin dealt her former lover a severe beating, causing his death, Latchmin bears no regret in her heart and neither do her sons.She is convinced that a fiery death awaited her entire family had her sons not stepped in to save them from the man who tormented her mercilessly.One of her sons, Asif Ally, 27, was released from prison last Friday and is on probation for the next three years. But even that chance for her heart to overflow with joy was stolen. Her eldest son Rajib, 28, along with his cousin David Jacobs, was not so lucky. They will have to spend the next eight years in prison.The three young men were sentenced by Justice Winston Patterson on a conviction for manslaughter.But Latchmin feels that she was cheated of justice. Even though one of her boys is out of jail, she feels he is still behind bars and will feel so for the next three years of his life while on probation and she wonders, as he does, how he will start life all over again.Along with the two others, Asif spent the last three years in jail and away from his wife, Elizabeth and their two daughters – Sonia,NFL Jerseys From China, four, and Maria, two. Elizabeth was pregnant with Maria when Asif was taken away to prison.Latchmin said that her sons were robbed of a prosperous life and she blames law enforcement officers for not treating her constant complaints seriously and for not protecting her.“Mommy, like it ain’t got justice,” she recalled Rajib telling her after the sentence was handed down. Now she wonders how Rajib and his cousin David will fare in prison for the next eight years.SEEN FROM BEHIND BARSLatchmin had her three boys (Asif, Rajib, and the younger Shameer,Wholesale Jerseys China, now 16) before she met Rameshwar Persaud two blocks away from the Camp Street Prison in early 1999.When Kaieteur News visited her home at Diamond Housing Scheme,China Jerseys, East Bank Demerara, she was not shy to admit that she had a thing for attractive men.“Meh gat ‘shine eye’.”So when Persaud wooed her she “fell for the trap”. He soon moved into her life, and into her home at the Sophia squatter settlement just outside of the main city district.Apparently, Persaud started to “eye her up” when she was visiting the prison to take food for someone who was there for possession of marijuana, she said, but she only knew of it months later.It didn’t take more than four months after the relationship started before the violent threats against her life and that of her boys started.Rajib (in forefront) and Asif in an undated photo.Stabroek News of September 1999 reported that Rajib and Asif were involved in a violent brawl with their stepfather and they were all fined.Latchmin said that her reputed husband was about to attack her when Rajib stepped in and he was stabbed.After a year, Latchmin took her sons and moved to Eccles, East Bank Demerara, to escape from the violent clutch of Persaud. However, it was not to be. He tracked her down, and in a leap of fate that things would change, she accepted him back into their lives. But the violence and the threats continued, and so did her reports to the police.She described him as a man who wanted her to be “locked up” in a house, never to go anywhere.Latchmin decided that she had to make a move again, this time to the East Coast Demerara village of Montrose. Persaud found her and she took him in again.“I was trying to make life good,” she said. Latchmin reasoned that she wasn’t getting any younger and needed to try to make things work. But it didn’t. The abuse continued.“It was like living at hell’s gate; it was a living hell.”One day he saw her downtown and ripped her dress apart. “Good thing I always wear tights or I would have been naked.”A taxi rescued her and took her home and she decided to free herself of the abusive relationship. This time, she decided she was going to head over the border to Suriname. But there was no escape from Rameshwar Persaud. He was there too!Out of sheer fear, Latchmin said she agreed to live with him there. She was in a foreign country and didn’t know too many people, so she decided to test fate again.She left Suriname and so did Persaud. Determined to part ways with him for good, she and her boys moved into an unfinished house at the new Diamond Housing Scheme. But Persaud was determined not to let them live in peace.When he would visit, it was always a confrontation. “He would cuss me and I would cuss he back,” Latchmin said. But he would not go away and would sleep on the bridge sometimes.On the fateful day, it was another of those outbursts. The woman quoted him as saying that he would burn the house down with the family inside.During the evening of February 5, 2006, the eldest son, Rajib, came home and enquired whether everyone was upstairs so he could close the gate. However, she said, he soon called out to her that someone was in the yard.As the events followed, Latchmin said she came downstairs to see Rameshwar Persaud with a container and a piece of wood in his hand. She feared that he was going to make good on his threat to burn the house down.A fight ensued between Rajib and Persaud,Wholesale Jerseys, and Rajib called out to his brother Asif and his cousin David for backup. While they beat him, Latchmin rushed to the Providence Police Station.Persaud tried to escape the beating but landed in a trench. He was hauled out and tied up so he would not escape before the Police came. However, they continued to beat him even though he was tied up.The Judge ruled that it is a person’s constitutional right to protect himself and property,Cheap Jerseys Free Shipping, but he said Rameshwar Persaud might not have died if the boys had ceased beating him after he was tied up.The Judge ruled that Persaud was caught where he should not have been and therefore tried to escape when he was being beaten.Latchmin is of the view that had the Police acted upon her constant complaints against the abuse and threats meted out to her, the events of February 6, 2006 would not have happened.Even so, she does not find fault with her sons for what happened.She said if her son did not come home in time, maybe Persaud would have burnt down the house with the entire family inside.“We would have all been dead.”Latchmin says that her sons have to live with “murder” on their hands,Wholesale Nike NFL Jerseys, but “I don’t regret that he (Rameshwar Persaud) is dead.” |
