Row over lamp sparked mayhem
By Courtney Jones
An incredible account of clinical and seething rage has emerged in the wake of the killing of seven family members at Buxton on Wednesday by a senior employee of the Securicor Security firm. Seven members of the Buxton family including the 97-year-old matriarch of the family, Angela Herod, her two daughters Shirley Cole-Herod, 60; and Patricia Harris, 58; and four children, two of whom were the murderer's, were slaughtered by gunshots in the early hours of Wednesday morning by 36-year-old Raul Herod. Herod then set the two-storey cottage in which the family lived on fire and killed himself. One of the family's neighbours, Abiola Edwards, whose home is situated in the same yard about 15 feet from what is now a charred pile of rubble that was once a family home, told this newspaper that she was awakened from her slumber by the murderer's mother, Cole-Herod berating him for stupidity and cursing him at the top of her voice. "This went on for some time and from what I could hear the quarrel had to something to do with Raul's slowness in lighting a lamp during the blackout," Edwards said, standing near the ruins of the tragic house. She said that what was strange was that Herod did not respond for a long time even though his mother continued her tirade after the electricity had returned. Edwards said all he did was to go into the yard and shout to his neighbours to stop "this woman from tormenting me." However, few persons dared risk going outside, she said. "I was peeping from my window and heard when he told his wife [Denise] twice to pack her clothes and leave the yard. She left the yard wearing a red top and green skirt but she was not carrying any clothes," Edwards said. All the while, according to Edwards, Denise was crying and Herod was telling her not to cry but to leave quickly. But, according to Edwards, what sparked the tragic chain of events was when Herod's mother began mocking and abusing his wife. At this stage, his wife had already left the yard and Herod, clad in a pair of short pants in which he had stuck the .32 Taurus automatic pistol, rushed up stairs, held his mother by the throat and, Edwards recounted, pumped five bullets into her face at close range. He then shot his nephew Erwin who was awakened by the noise. Edwards said she saw the child stumble down the stairs with blood pouring from his mouth, before he collapsed in the yard. Herod ran into the bedroom upstairs and shot his aunt Patricia Harris. He then returned downstairs into his one-room dwelling, and, lifting his daughter Adele Nandy by one of her plaits, shot her in the face. He executed his seven-year-old son Rodel, known as Bobby, also with one shot. According to Edwards, Herod then singled out his niece Jonelle for execution before shooting his son Jermaine in the face. As Jermaine fell, Edwards said, Herod turned and went back upstairs and the child got up and ran out of the yard. Jermaine was the only one who survived the carnage. He is now hospitalised. The woman said that it was at that stage that she and her companion scaled the fence and put some distance between themselves and the compound, before turning to see what would happen next. She said they observed Herod pouring a substance around the house, which he then set to burn. Herod waited until the structure was well and truly ablaze before walking back into the building. One of his neighbours, fireman Kenroy Rose, said he heard at least two shots after Herod entered the blazing building. He discounted any notion that the killer committed suicide by burning himself to death. He said that as a fireman he knew that instinctively, Herod would have not have stayed in the building. "He shot himself. I am sure of that," Rose told Stabroek News. Edwards said that when she returned home after the incident she could not find the flambeau she used in her house, but subsequently found it in the yard. She speculated that Herod must have gone into her house for the lamp and used it to ignite whatever liquid he had thrown around the house. Edwards, who said that she had been living in the area for just over a month, added that hardly a night passed without a domestic dispute in the Herod household. She recalled that there was always shouting and cursing from the killer and other members of the family.
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