Plaisance businesswoman Sharon Burnett was brutality killed in her shop just after midnight on Sunday.
When the News Room visited the family home at Graham Street Plaisance, East Coast Demerara, the family was still coming to grips with what happened a few hours earlier.
Burnett would have celebrated her 54th birthday on Monday.
Burnett’s brother, Warren Burnett, told the News Room that the suspect, 57-year-old Samuel Cummings, had threatened to murder his sister since Saturday.
He related that at the market Saturday, Cummings was “behaving bad” and “cussing” saying: “I gon kill she, I gon murder she…cause they get monkey going in my house and thiefing my things.”
Burnett said he told his sister to go to the station and make a report, but she did not.
It was also reported that the suspect spent 17 years in prison for murder and was released on parole.
Cummings lived in the house right next door to the Burnetts and according to her brother, he had recently started to verbally abuse persons in the area.
Before the gruesome incident, Cummings reportedly lit a fire in a freezer close to the shop and when Burnett came out to investigate, he attacked her and slashed her across the neck.
The post mortem examination conducted on Monday revealed that the wound was four inches wide.
The father of the woman’s children, Aubrey Clement, explained what he heard happened. He said he was at home when one of his daughters called and told him that somebody had killed her mother.
“This story stem from a monkey that is deh all over the place, he saying that is she monkey and the monkey thieding he money and the thing start from then.
“Last night I hear she was sleeping and he lit a fire in a freezer and after it start smoking she come outside and then is when he attacked her,” Clement said.
The timely arrival of the police at the scene prevented relatives from beating Cummings. The News Room understands that after committing the act, he disposed of the murder weapon, a cutlass, and hid in some bushes a short distance from the scene.
Burnett, a businesswoman of over 20 years was described as a very good person.
Had she been alive, her friends and family would be cooking and celebrating her birthday with her.
The family said after the funeral arrangements for Sharon Burnett, they will be seeking justice.
“We gotta seek justice; it cannot go down just so; my sister didn’t deserve to die how she died here,” the brother said.
