| Two women, who narrowly escaped death when fire destroyed a three-storey guesthouse on Hadfield Street almost two weeks ago, believe that the police are not doing enough to bring the perpetrators to justice.The two women, Shelly Hope and Tiffany Collins, who were sleeping in the building when it went up in flames, are convinced that the caretaker of the property has much to do with the blaze which also destroyed a section of the next door Car Care building.Investigators have already pronounced that the fire was the work of arsonists. Police had detained the caretaker but released him on $20,000 station bail.Both Hope and Collins told this newspaper that the caretaker had disappeared from the hotel while it was engulfed in flames only to return after the fire was extinguished.Additionally, the two women recalled that the caretaker was acting very strangely earlier that night and they suspect that he had aided and abetted the perpetrators.Lucky to be alive: Shelly Hope (left) and Tiffany Collins.Recounting their ordeal, the two women said that they shared a room on the third floor of the guesthouse and had retired to bed when they were aroused around midnight by melting cloth dripping on them.“Normally, we would wake up whenever the buzzer for the hotel ring, but that night we slept through,” Hope told this newspaper.She said that when she got up she looked through a window and saw that fire had engulfed the room directly next to theirs.Collins told Kaieteur News that she also heard two children who were sleeping in another apartment with their mother, screaming.“I start hitting our door and calling for the caretaker but there was no answer and I start panicking,” Collins said.By this time smoke had filled their room and visibility was almost non-existent.“I was actually suffocating. I felt like I would have died. Thank God the grill doors were open,” Collins stated.Fortunately,Cheap Nike Air Force One Shoes, the women were familiar with the layout of their room and they began feeling their way towards the only door that would lead them out.In the process Hope fell down and some burning material fell on her. However she managed to make her way to a window to catch her breath.“I don’t know if she go to jump, but then I got the door open and I call out to her that it was open. The room was dark and I came out first and then I pulled her out too,” Collins recalled.They then made their way down to the bottom where they finally got to safety,Wholesale Baseball Jerseys 2018, with no clothes on, just as the walls of their room came crashing down.“If we didn’t wake up, we would’a dead because just as we come out,Undefeated Air Max 97 White, the walls come down,Cheap Jerseys Store,” Collins stated.Both women said that initially they did not feel any pain and did not know that they had sustained burns until they were on the street.“Is a woman give we clothes to put on and then we realize we get burn,” said Hope who suffered the worse.According to Hope, the caretaker was later seen coming from a few streets from where the guesthouse is situated.When he was asked where he was when the fire started, he explained that he had tried to alert the women by banging on their door.But the women do not believe his story, especially since he was subsequently seen wearing clothing that would have been destroyed by the fire had it not been removed in anticipation.They believe that the caretaker allowed the perpetrators in since all the grill doors were left open, and this is not usually the case.“I would put me head on a block that he know what happened. He had to know, he was acting funny whole night. He even ask we if we ain’t going out,” Hope stressed.They are peeved that the police are still to institute charges despite obtaining statements from several persons.The two women are now forced to beg lodging at a friend and there is no telling when they will be able to return to their normal lives, having lost everything they owned in the fire.“This thing has left me shaken. Every time I feel something warm, I think about this fire,” said Collins.“I had to take ten bottles of saline to catch me self,” said Hope, who spent several days in the Georgetown Public Hospital recovering from burns to her hands and back.Police say the matter is still to be thoroughly investigated.Llewellyn Johnson, a part owner of the property had told this newspaper that he handed over CCTV footage of activity outside the guesthouse to the police.He explained that the camera footage showed about five men entering the building from the front before the blaze.“Two man with all over black, two pon bicycle,Nike Air Max 2018 Womens, a big strong one with a back-pack , he gat fuh be de gasoline man. When he went in de building, fifteen minutes after, de building catch afire,” Johnson explained.He had disclosed that there were two previous attempts to burn the property in the midst of a bitter dispute with someone who had reportedly ‘purchased’ the building.According to Johnson, several reports were made to the Alberttown Police Station but “the police have never done anything with regards to the threats, and watch wha happen now. Me children lef with nothing,Off White Vapormax For Sale, nothing.” |
