–battered survivor Natasha Houston advises women

By Shauna Jemmott
NATASHA Houston has seen her daughter’s death, has had shadows of her own, and has felt her son’s. As a mother, she fought with one hand, in blood and pain, to save her two-year-old boy; but as she ran to open the door for his safe escape, her berserk husband chopped the fingers off her left hand, after severing her right hand, as he displayed his horribly brutish nature and took her a few steps closer to the end.

Within the walls of her home at Lot 867 Zeelugt North, East Bank Essequibo, she almost died in a chilling episode which lasted for minutes and left her two children, Kimberly Houston, 5, and Saif Amad Lord, 2, dead around the 6 O’ clock hour of July 31, 2013.

Their 26-year-old father, Richard Lord, had perpetrated the capital crimes.

Days before the horrifying event, the woman had escaped with her two children from the home she had shared with this abusive husband, and had sought refuge at a friend’s home in Phoenix Park, because her husband Richard Lord had flown into a jealous rage after hearing rumours of her being promiscuous, and he had battered her repeatedly. She had carried along her children, and had secretly accompanied her mom and sister on a visit to a cousin’s house in the Meten-meer-Zorg area.

Knowing that her cane-cutter husband Richard Lord was excessively jealous and wrathful, and had specifically ordered her not to leave home while he was at work, she had lied to him by telling him that she was at home all day when he asked. She said he would usually question other people, even the children, to confirm every response from his regular interrogations whenever he returned home from work. She had, unfortunately, forgotten to tell her sister to corroborate her story whenever the man approached, so he had found out from that source that her answer had been far from the truth.

She was punished with a beating, during which he had cut her leg, and Natasha had planned and executed her escape well, hiding out at a friend’s house in Phoenix Park.

For days, the man hunted her down but failed to spot her, although he suspected she was there. He visited the Welfare Department and lodged a complaint, which led to a letter from the Welfare Department of the Ministry of Human Services and Social Security being delivered to her, asking that she should visit one of its offices that Monday. She said fear kept her in until Wednesday, when she decided to make the visit, after persuading herself that the man would have given up stalking her.

As she and children walked along the road away from where she stayed, she spotted nobody but saw a white car slowly approaching. Having jitters, she said she picked up her toddler son and asked her daughter to hold on to her skirt, so that they could increase the pace of their movement.

“When the car reach up, the door open and I just feel somebody push me in this car,” she said. The baby hit his head on the car and fell, crying; and she saw her husband pick up the children and push them into the car through a window. He entered the vehicle and started dealing her some blows as the driver drove the vehicle to the home from whence she had escaped.

The woman said she pleaded with the driver twice to drive into the police station, even asking him once if he would like someone to treat his own daughter like that and nobody does anything to save her, but the driver ignored her entreaties. As they reached the family’s final destination, her sister, who lives with their mom in the house in front of hers, asked her why she had returned home. “The passion in me, I said, ‘I come home for my death!’ and I walk straight,” she stated.

At home, Lord asked her to cook for him, and she refused, stating, “I’m not cooking fuh you any more, fuh strengthen you more fuh you beat me more.” He appeared already to have had a few drinks, and he sent their daughter Kimberly for another bottle of rum. Eventually, the man cooked curried chicken.

It was intended to be a death return, but though it was her children who eventually were killed, Natasha lived to tell the tale as a victim and a powerful witness of a horror story. He beat her all that particular day, and sharpened his cane-cutter cutlass at around 5:00 pm, just a few hours after he openly confessed that he would “kill all ayuh in hey!”

She said every time the man had to leave the house, he padlocked her in the bedroom; and when he returned, he opened the door.

Her mom returned home and heard the battles and her screams of horror during the commotion from the day-long assault, and she decided to warn the man that she would call the police.

Even while Natasha was preparing porridge for her son, she received blows. Her daughter was eating at the time, and the man peered through a window and overheard her mother talking to police on a mobile phone.

The woman said all she felt was a burning sensation on her arm, and when she looked, she noticed it was severed, but just hanging by the skin. Blood began running in the home from that moment. “Kimberley got up and attempted to run to open the locked door, but was dealt a chop which severed her head, before he kicked her body to the ground. It was 6 O’ clock on the dot,” she reminisced.

The woman said she observed all that in a single moment! The baby, who had witnessed his sister’s murder, began to cry. Even though her right hand had been severed and was bleeding, and she was confused, she set herself on a mission to defend her baby. Natasha instinctively began fighting her cutlass-wielding husband, their daughter’s killer, now to save their two-year-old son. That is when she lost three and a half fingers on her left hand.

“The baby start to holler. After I push him (her husband) down on the bed, I say ‘Saif (baby) run! Run, Saif!’ (but) the baby (was) confused because I telling he run and he (father) telling he don’t run. So I go and turn the kiddie to open the door because the door didn’t have bolt. But when I go fuh turn the thing to open like this, all my fingers he chop off. He start fuh beat me up more. The baby lef hollering,” the woman detailed.

A single lit lamp provided the means for them to see; and as darkness stepped in, the family seemed trapped in a hell hole of despair. “I said ‘Don’t cry Saif, sister already dead’,” but the baby, looking at the blood dripping from his mother and turning in confusion and fear, screamed as he stood.

Within that maelstrom of fear, anger and desperation, she fought, cried, shouted, pleaded; stood up, fell down, was dragged, and tortured as he pushed her into every wall, every corner of their home. He held on to her hair as he blew the lamp out, and when he swung the sharp blade, she feel on her knees, listening to the sounds of his wrathful breathing as the baby’s screams dominating the air.

It was hard to even hear her mother, Bibi Khairool, incessantly knocking at the door. Within that passageway of life and death came an eerie silence of uncertainty as she felt her son’s blood pouring upon her whilst she knelt in the darkness. She heard the commotion as the killer ran out of the house, pushing her mother down the stairs as he scampered into the darkness.

Then suddenly light appeared. Someone had lit the lamp, and although her home was now filled with family members and strangers, she could neither garner strength nor courage to get up. Her life has since been changed.

The skeletal remains of Richard Lord, her fugitive husband, were found hanging from a tree amidst some thorn bushes in farmlands located behind their home. Natasha is now an advocate for the elimination of violence against women. She is associated with Help and Shelter and Denise Dias’s Women in Black.

Her advice to women is: “Don’t stay in an abusive relationship. The people around you, their lives may depend on your leaving, especially your kids.”