Calder woman making steady recovery since cutlass attackLUCKY TO BE ALIVE

In life miracles do happen and Eloise Rogers is a living testimony of this after surviving a vicious cutlass attack last June and another last week Tuesday.

Instead of snatching her life, her former lover and attacker Basil “Brown” Bascombe of Carriere died instead. It is believed that he committed suicide by drinking a poisonous substance the day after he attacked Eloise.{{more}}

Before Bascombe succumbed he lit Rogers’ home afire.

The 28-year-old mother of two who resides at Calder said her nightmare started on the night of Tuesday, January 2, at her home when she asked Bascombe to leave.

“We had an argument and I told him to go and that caused the whole thing,” Rogers told SEARCHLIGHT from her Milton Cato Memorial Hospital bed.

Bascombe attacked her that night with a cutlass and “planned” her several times about her body. However, she was successful in wrestling the weapon away from him. When she finally got the cutlass into her possession she threw it through the window.

“All the time he wrestling with me I was praying. I remember praying that God will take care of my daughter,” said Rogers.

During the struggle she incurred several scrapes about her body as well as a stab.

Rogers claimed that later Tuesday night Bascombe asked her not to report the matter to the police and she gave him her word that she would not.

By Wednesday morning, Rogers said things had begun to normalise and Bascombe even assisted by bathing, dressing her and making breakfast for her four-year daughter Ceanna Rogers.

“While dressing her he was in the bedroom watching me dress. It must have been at that point other things fly up in his head,” Rogers lamented.

“He packed his clothes in a sack but I never knew he had the cutlass wrapped up inside the bag. When we went up the road he started walking very fast before going out of sight. As soon as I got to a lonely area he just fly out of the bushes, bite his lips and rushed towards me with the cutlass and from that time it was just chop.

“When he gave me the first chop it was going for my neck and I blocked it with my right hand. If the cutlass was sharpened it would have take off my hand,” said Rogers adding that her daughter ran when she witnessed the attack which occured at about 7 o’clock Wednesday morning.

Recalling the frightful drama Rogers said that she then ran into the nearby yard of Curtis John. She believed that her life was spared after John asked Bascombe not to enter his yard.

While waiting on the police to arrive at John’s home, Rogers said his neighbours cried out that her home was on fire.

Bascombe was found dead in a farmer’s shed the following morning by a farmer.

“I am going back to give God praise and thanks because if it was not for him I might not have been alive,” said Rogers.

All Rogers’ possessions were destroyed in the fire as well as her daughter’s. She said that any one willing to assist her daughter can contact Rogers’ mother Veronica Reece of Richland Park at 4585185.