A moth­er of five was killed and her friend wound­ed fol­low­ing a shoot­ing in Mau­si­ca on Sun­day night. 

Ac­cord­ing to re­ports, the shoot­ing took place around 7 pm, as 38-year-old Lin­da Dalips­ingh, of Cres­cent Dri­ve, Mau­si­ca Road, D’Abadie, was sit­ting in her front gallery with her 27-year-old friend from Wa­ter­hole, Co­corite. 

A man re­port­ed­ly walked in front of Dalips­ingh’s home, drew a gun and be­gan shoot­ing in their di­rec­tion. 

Dalips­ingh and her friend at­tempt­ed to run in­to the house but were shot be­fore they could make it in­side. The gun­man then quick­ly ran away in the di­rec­tion he came. 

Dalips­ingh’s 11-month-old child and the child’s fa­ther were in­side the house at the time of the shoot­ing, but es­caped un­scathed. 

Dalips­ingh and her friend were tak­en to the Ari­ma Dis­trict Hos­pi­tal by Emer­gency Health Ser­vices (EHS) per­son­nel. 

Dalips­ingh died around 9.45 pm while un­der­go­ing emer­gency surgery. 

Dalips­ingh’s friend, who was shot once in his left leg, re­mained ward­ed in a sta­ble con­di­tion up to late yes­ter­day. 

Homi­cide de­tec­tives vis­it­ed the scene and re­cov­ered 10 spent 9mm shells. 

Po­lice sources said yes­ter­day that based on the cir­cum­stances of what tran­spired, they be­lieve that the gun­man may have been tar­get­ing Dalips­ingh’s friend and not her. They said al­though a search was con­duct­ed to ap­pre­hend the gun­man, he was not ar­rest­ed up to late yes­ter­day. 

When a news team from Guardian Me­dia vis­it­ed the res­i­den­tial com­mu­ni­ty yes­ter­day, no one was at Dalips­ingh’s home and the front gate was un­latched. 

The house, which was not cor­doned off with cau­tion tape, ap­peared to be un­touched since the shoot­ing, as a pool of thick­ened blood was seen on the steps lead­ing to the gallery and bro­ken glass from a win­dow, which was hit by a stray bul­let, cov­ered the floor of the gallery. 

A group of per­sons, who claimed to be friends of Dalips­ingh and her child’s fa­ther, vis­it­ed the scene af­ter hear­ing re­ports of the shoot­ing. 

The group of friends, who de­clined to com­ment ex­ten­sive­ly about Dalips­ingh, stat­ed that she pre­vi­ous­ly worked for the Com­mu­ni­ty-based En­vi­ron­men­tal Pro­tec­tion and En­hance­ment Pro­gramme (Cepep). 

They claimed that Dalips­ingh lived at the lo­ca­tion with her youngest child and the child’s fa­ther, while her old­er chil­dren lived with rel­a­tives. 

Dalips­ingh’s next-door neigh­bour ap­peared ap­pre­hen­sive to speak about the in­ci­dent, as he claimed that he bare­ly knew her as she on­ly moved in­to the com­mu­ni­ty with­in the past two years. 

“We would see her around but we nev­er re­al­ly spoke,” he said. 

Dalips­ingh’s mur­der and that of En­ter­prise res­i­dent Avinash “Kr­y­sis” Seep­er­sad raised the mur­der count for the year thus far to 217, com­pared to 142 for the same pe­ri­od last year—an al­most 52 per cent in­crease. 

In­spec­tor Pitt, Sgt Mo­hammed, Cpl Oliv­er, PC Ali and WPC White of the Re­gion Two Homi­cide Bu­reau are con­tin­u­ing in­ves­ti­ga­tions. 

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Drummers from the Egbe Omo Oni Isese Traditional African Association.

Drummers from the Egbe Omo Oni Isese Traditional African Association.

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