Mothers slain in brutal killings

In the short space of four days, seven children, ages ranging from eight months to 14 years, became motherless after two women lost their lives in very different circumstances.
Both stories are as tragic as they are terrifying.
Shortly after 6 a.m. on Saturday, July 3, the nude body of Silma Wallace was discovered in a temporary toilet at White Chapel Road, Kingstown, where she had begun a seven-day stint as a toilet attendant. {{more}}
It appeared the 37-year-old woman had been raped and strangled.
Wallace was the mother of two girls Lonique, 14, and Landor, 7, and two boys, Leroy, 1-year-8 months and Lexroy, 8 months.
A distraught Lonique said she was at home when neighbours called her and broke the news.
“I thought is a lie they were telling me. I said mommy dead fuh true?”
On Wednesday when SEARCHLIGHT chatted with the teenager, she said the first two days following her mother’s death were very hard for her. During that time she also had to cope with the death of a great aunt and the news of a close friend being hospitalised.
“Me and my mother was real close. She would tell me everything and I will tell her everything,” Lonique lamented.
She said the last month of her mother’s life had been very turbulent, with her mother on several occasions having to make reports to the police against an ex-boyfriend.
And while Vincentians were still trying to make some sense of that murder, they awoke on Tuesday morning to the heart-wrenching news that a Cane End woman had been murdered seemingly in gangland style.
Relatives of the victim, 34-year-old Decima John said she was raped last year and was due to appear in Court on Wednesday, July 7, 2004.
John will never have her day in court as she was gunned down shortly after 6 a.m. while on her way to an outside toilet just a few yards away from her home. She leaves to mourn two sons, Kemon, 13, Ikeno, 7, and a daughter Omisha, 11.
“I was sleeping and I heard a loud noise. I pitch out of my sleep, I was going back to sleep when I heard my sister calling me, and said look mommy down there. Blood was running down from her side,” recalled the very traumatised Kemon.
Jursiann John, one of Decima’s sisters remembered her sister as the best.
“I couldn’t talk when I got the news. It was so sad I didn’t know what to do,” said John who rushed all the way from Barrouallie when she heard the sad news.
The police are investigating the incidents.