“The last time I saw my daughter was on the first of this month.”
Those were the words of Lisa Pompey, the grieving mother of 21-year-old Kerriana Standford, whose body was discovered buried in a shallow grave at Chelsea Park, Mahaica yesterday, one week after she was last seen.
Speaking with Kiskadee Watch, Pompey said Standford left home on July 1 after her child’s father sent a vehicle to pick her up.
She recalled that at around 10 a.m. that day she telephoned her daughter to ask where she was.
“I say, ‘Where you deh?’ She tell me, ‘Mommy, me deh at Mahaica taking out clothes to carry,’” Pompey said.
Pompey said she then asked her daughter to bring back an earpiece and told her she was waiting on her. According to Pompey, Standford replied that she would return shortly.
However, she never came home.
Pompey said she attempted to call her daughter again the following day but was met with a recorded message indicating that the phone had been switched off or was no longer in service.
At first, she said, she was not overly alarmed because Standford sometimes travelled to Berbice and did not always answer her phone.
“I quarrel with she and tell she, ‘Mustn’t do them thing because if anything happen to you, people ain’t gon know,’” Pompey recalled. “She just laugh.”
The family continued calling Standford’s phone but received no response.
Then, at about 4:56 p.m. on Friday, Pompey said her nephew telephoned to say someone had informed him that Standford had been involved in an accident and was at the Mahaicony Hospital.
She immediately contacted her brother and asked him to go to the hospital.
“My brother call me back and say I gotta come down because she mash up,” Pompey said.
When she arrived, she learnt that it had not been a traffic accident.
“When I go, is not accident. It appear like they kill she and bury she in a shallow grave,” she said.
Pompey said she was unaware of any history of violence between her daughter and the suspect.
“I can’t really tell because she don’t tell me nothing. If she and me get any problem or something, she don’t tell me because she ain’t living with me,” she said.
Standford, who was the mother of one child, was also pregnant and due to give birth on November 6.
According to police, the woman’s body was discovered buried in a shallow grave behind a residence at Chelsea Park, Mahaica, after ranks acted on information received. Investigators said preliminary enquiries revealed that Standford had visited the residence of a 24-year-old porter before she disappeared.
The suspect was subsequently arrested at Enmore, East Coast Demerara, and remains in police custody as investigations continue.
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