THE death of a mother and injury to four persons, including her spouse and two young sons, has created fear and scepticism among the residents of Burnt Shop in Cavaliers, West Rural St Andrew, as some claim it was an act of poisoning, while others attribute the events to supernatural forces.

The strange incident, which occurred about 8:00 pm last Sunday, claimed the life Gizel Gunter, 30.

A neighbour, who identified herself as Panzy Thompson, was hurt when she went to assist the family. The ghastly incident has left residents of the community on the edge, with some saying they won’t ever again enter Gunter’s house.

Gunter’s boyfriend, who gave his name only as ‘Pee’, spoke with a shaky hush as he relayed the night he felt he had come to death’s door. According to the 42-year-old, the night started like “any other Sunday night”.

“We ate earlier and then we go back and eat again,” he said. “All of us were in the house and then I realise that the older one (10-year-old son) started to throw up,” he said, noting that during this time Gunter was resting on the bed.

Gunter, a domestic worker, was scheduled to go to work later that night, he said.

“When I went into the room I saw him [the older son] on him hands and knees vomiting. And when I rush him to the bathroom I realised that him start to pass faeces, and his eyes start roll over in him head,” he said. “I put him in some cold water, trying to revive him, and then when I came out the little one (eight years old) said that he wanted to use the bathroom. So I took him up and put him on the toilet, but I realised that he wasn’t sitting up on the toilet and that his eyes started to roll over too,” the man related.

He said he then alerted his sleeping girlfriend before rubbing the boys with olive oil. All this time he was praying to God, he said.

Gunter, he said, phoned her neighbour, Thompson, who rushed to the house. That’s when things became even more sinister.

“She called me and said that the little boy dem over there a vomit and a mess up demselves, and that I am to come because she feel like she going to dead,” said the woman, who added that the couple and the children had been living at the house for more than a year.

Thompson cringed as she recalled the children laying messy in the house and their mother sprawled out on her bed. She said she asked Pee what they ate and he said they had “pork and rice”.

Thompson said her first impression was that they had been poisoned.

Fearing she would be held responsible if any of them died, she said that she thought of leaving the house. But something compelled her to try to resuscitate the children.

“I took them up and I began to rub them up with olive oil. I rub and I rub and nothing. Then me rub the first and blow pon him and is like him just rise up. Me do the same for the other one and him rise up too,” she said, noting that their mother remained unresponsive on the bed.

Thompson said she thought about taking them to a hospital, but the roads are so bad in the area that “if you sick is better you just lay down there till a morning when day come out”.

She said that her efforts to revive Gunter proved futile, and so she decided to leave, but when she called Pee to let her out he was also unresponsive.

“When I look in the other room, I see him stretch out in a chair nah talk. Him have lock jaw, the two boys them did have lock jaw too,” she recounted. She then moved toward the door, and that’s when she passed out, she said.

About 5:00 the next morning, Pee woke up and saw his girlfriend, the children, and Thompson sprawled about the house. None were responsive. He called for help and Thompson’s daughters — who had now realised that their mother did not return home Sunday night — ran over and saw their mother sitting on the floor, staring as if in a trance, said the girls.

Even more puzzling, she had a burn on her right shoulder, and wasn’t able to move the right side of her body. Pee also woke up with mysterious burns on the right side of his torso and back, and recalled his right foot being swollen when he woke up.

Yesterday, he walked with a limp.

Both said that they went to doctors, but their injuries could not be explained by the professionals. Neither could the doctors say what was wrong with the children.

Pee showed the Jamaica Observer X-ray images of his back taken at the Kingston Public Hospital; all showed no signs of the cause of his injuries, he said.

Thompson said that her doctor prescribed medication which has helped to restore “feeling” in her right side.

Pee said doctors performed an autopsy on Gunter on Thursday but the family is yet to receive the results. He said that when he saw her body it had a bruise on its face and that dried blood was on her mouth and nose.

When the Sunday Observer visited the house yesterday, the entrance was locked tightly, and the few residents who reluctantly braved an escort to the premises ventured nowhere near the door.

Residents claimed that police investigators who scoured the scene on Monday said that they also felt “upset” inside the building, and they ordered that no one enter.

Pee said the cops questioned him about the storage of chemicals at the house. However, he told them that he did not have any there as he used only organic manure as fertiliser for his crops.

The children are now staying with their father in a neighbouring parish, he said.

In the meantime, in nearby ‘Red Grung’, Gunter’s mother, Ambrozine Lobban, 65, tried to make sense of her daughter’s death. She, like many, believes her child was killed by ghosts.

“She was hurt by someone; I could see it. It looked like she was hit by a demon in her head. She wasn’t brutally hit by anyone, like she was in a fuss; it’s not that. She was just lying in her bed, and all four of them was there praying when it happened,” she said.

“She is a quiet girl, and she does not like to keep friends like myself. But she lives good with people and most of her friends are male,” Lobban said.

Asked who would want to hurt her daughter, Lobban had only one person in mind, an ex-boyfriend who, she said, was less than pleased that her daughter left him.

The incident comes on the heels of one similar in St Elizabeth last month where a family is said to be haunted by demons.