Written by Shirley Thomas
A woman was yesterday taken into police custody even as a second is being hunted by police in connection with the stabbing of 32-year-old Linda Phillips of Crown Dam, Industry, East Coast Demerara.

Phillips, who shares a common-law relationship with mechanic Gary Carrington, from which an 11-month-old son was born, was at home alone at approximately 10:00hrs yesterday when a woman (known to both Phillips and Carrington) approached her pretending to be a health visitor.

When the woman knocked on the door, she was carrying a little bag, and she informed Phillips that she was doing “blood pressure testing” in the area, and had come to do hers.
Phillips invited the woman into the house, whereupon she was attacked and repeatedly stabbed in the back.
The wounded Phillips began screaming for help, and the landlord upstairs, known as ‘Pamela’, as well as other neighbours heard her screams and ran to her rescue, but the intruder fled through an exit bridge at the back of the yard, before she was apprehended, and secluded herself in the dense foliage.

The men in the neighbourhood, however, combed the area and found her, whereupon, probably afraid of the consequences of her actions, she volunteered information that someone had paid her to kill Phillips.
Phillips’s reputed husband, who said he was at work servicing a generator at time of the incident, recalled that his eldest son phoned him, begging him to go home right away, since “Linda was stabbed up and bleeding badly”. He complied and, to his horror, discovered his wife badly wounded.
The police were summoned, and on entering the home discovered the bag the suspect was carrying, as well as the implement she had used to stab Phillips. In the bag were gloves, a wig, an old dress, hypodermic needle, syringes, and liquid in a bottle, along with other medical paraphernalia.
The badly wounded Phillips was rushed to the Georgetown Public Hospital (GPHC) even as the suspect was taken into police custody.
Asked whether he had any idea why the woman would want to kill his wife, and who the person might be, Carrington said he strongly suspected one person with whom he was living with previously. He added that the apprehended person also had a close connection to the person he suspected of planning Linda Phillips’s death.
Phillips remained at the Intensive Care Unit of the GPHC late yesterday. Her condition has been listed as critical.