Sixteen people from Dow Village, California, were displaced yesterday morning, after four men firebombed a wooden house in the community. Two houses were destroyed and five bedrooms at two other houses were gutted.
Tony Beharry, whose family of five lost three bedrooms at their home, said the men came looking for a neighbour who had been involved in an altercation with another man on Saturday.
"He stabbed a man and they threatened to come back for him, but like they come back the same night but he wasn't there because the police locked him up," Beharry said.
Beharry said he was awakened by a noise around 2 a.m., looked outside and saw four masked men ransacking the neighbour's house. Two of the men were inside and two were outside, breaking and throwing things.
"I woke up my girlfriend and told her what was happening. They were pelting things all over the house. Three people living there, but only the lady was in the house and she ran through the back door and escaped," he said.
"I run outside but when I watch, I see three men with blade in their hands so I run back inside but like they had already thrown the gas because the fellahs and them pelt a flambeau inside the woman car and light the mattress afire inside of the house and then they run out the road. I called the fireman over the road and they called the fire brigade."
Vishnu Ramkilawan said two bedrooms in his house were completely destroyed, as well as the seats in his boat that was in front of his house.
"I was asleep when my wife, who smelled the smoke, woke me up. I got up and saw my boat, which had 32 gallons of fuel in it, smoking, so I made sure and pulled it out of the yard and parked it in the road as well as the two vehicles I had parked in the yard and got everyone out."
He said the fire jumped from one house to the next, eventually reaching his home, but the Fire Service responded quickly and was able to save the rest of the house.
"The most expensive things we lost were the computers but we also lost all of our clothes and personal belongings. The Minister, Rudy Indarsingh, visited us and he promised to get us mattresses and foodstuff."
Michelle Myers also lost her home, which was located behind the house where the fire started.
"My daughter and I were asleep, when we were awakened by crackling glass. When I got up and looked through my window, the entire front house was on fire. So my daughter and I ran through the back and around the neighbour's house to escape the fire and we went and stand up in the road," Myers said.
"What really hurt me is that I had already bought everything for Christmasâ€â€ÂÂÂa new stove, a new washing machine and a computer for my daughter who is ten... first day she played with it was yesterday. I don't know what we are going to do now because we have lost everything."
they shut it down from the inside, some safety vale or sometihing.
