By Bibi Khatoon
A man who suspected that his wife was having an affair, locked her inside their Lot 182 Da Silva Street, Georgetown home on Tuesday night and set it on fire, forcing her to jump through a window.
While the fire completely destroyed the building, it also spread to a two-story house occupied by their neighbour, Adunni Orderson, a mother of three, who is now left homeless.
A visit to the location this morning saw Orderson, her relatives, and a tenant, Ovid Stewart gathered around the ruins contemplating their next move. Stewart rented the lower flat of the building.
According to information reaching News Room, a 44-year-old man set the house on fire following an argument with his 37-year-old wife, Joan Jarvis.
A police source disclosed that the suspect, who is a musician, locked his partner in the house before using some gasoline he kept in a “Busta drink bottle” to set the house alight. News Room understands that the woman managed to escape by jumping through a window following which she suffered severe injuries about her body.
The fire spread within fifteen minutes to the neighbours’ residence. While the suspect is yet to be located, neighbours disclosed that the woman is hospitalised.
Orderson told News Room that she noticed a blaze outside her window just after 22:00hrs on Tuesday, just as her daughter returned from classes at the University of Guyana.
“After that, everything just get frantic. I collect my children, hop over the fence—because ah couldn’t find the keys—by the time I was ready to come back, it was all over with,” the woman told News Room.
She recounted that her aim was to get her children to her sister’s home which is across the street and returned to save items from the home but the fire quickly escalated.
“It went up in no time,” the mother of three said. It is her belief that it was a mattress that the suspect set alight since the fire started in the room.
Orderson, who has been residing at Da Silva Street for 22 years, disclosed that it is not the first domestic dispute between her neighbours.
“You does always hear stuff going on but you know, everybody take care of themselves and mind their own business.”
The woman and her three children ages 21, 15 and 2 years old, are currently staying with her sister.
Meanwhile, the tenant, Stewart who was already asleep in the lower flat of the house when the fire began, said he is just “thanking God for life.”
The elderly man, who has been renting the lower flat of the house since his return from the United States in 2004, said he heard “cackling and thought it was firecrackers.”
“But when I looked through my window the house over there was an inferno already…all I had to do is just get up out of there, pick whatever and then come out.”
