SAINIMERE Tuinasakea was a single mother for 13 years who found love last year, married last month and died at the weekend, allegedly stabbed to death.
Her death at the Public Rental Board housing in Jittu Estate, Suva, on Sunday morning could have been avoided, her eldest daughter, Maryanne Tuinasakea said, as she blamed the loud music from a nearby church which drowned her cry for help.
“From 11.46am to 12.10pm that Sunday morning I was yelling out from the house, crying and running outside the flat to call for help but no one heard me,” she said.
“The instruments played from the nearby church and the loud singing drowned my voice and every time I ran out and cried loudly while asking for help, someone would walk out from that church and tell me to keep quiet because they were praising.
“If their volume was low, someone would have heard me and quickly helped my mother and we would still have her today. Even when my mum laid helplessly in her room, she was yelling and calling me but I didn’t hear her because of the loud music.
“When I heard her I ran into the room and saw her in a pool of blood, and she told me that she was calling out for a while.”
Maryanne who witnessed everything that happened said her mum’s last words to her were: “Look after your siblings, love them and if anything happens to me, go and stay with your aunty (her younger sister).”
“Mum and my stepdad just had a short argument and when she went to ask for his forgiveness, the incident then happened.
“I miss her so much, she could have lived if only someone heard me while that loud music played from the church,” she said.
Her aunty Seini Tuinasakea (Sainimere’s younger sister) said she spoke to Sainimere at about 9.15 that morning and they planned to have lunch as a family.
“At about 11.30am, my cousin called me to tell about the incident and I just didn’t believe it at all, so I told my cousins to contact the police,” she said.
“Even when we went to the flat, the loud music from the church continued throughout the morning and my niece told me what she faced in trying to get help and the police that arrived also discussed the loud music issue with us.”
Sainimere worked for the Fiji Immigration Department and is survived by her three children Maryanne, 13, Ezekiel Bolitagane, 4 and Maureen Tabualevu, 3.
Her husband Paula was a NEC beneficiary for the past 10 years based in New Zealand.
