Depressed and pained over numerous ailments, housewife Gloria Lalchan-Roach decided to end her sorrows when she drank gramoxone at the San Fernando Church of Christ on Tuesday. Lalchan, 48, who lived with her husband Kelvin Roach, 58, at Vistabella Road, Springvale, survived for two hours at the San Fernando General Hospital but doctors said she drank too much of the herbicide and her organs eventually shut down.
There had been no sign before that Lalchan-Roach had suicidal thoughts as they planned to spend their eighth wedding anniversary on April 14 with a lunch for two. Speaking to the T&T Guardian at his home yesterday, Roach said he had no idea why she took her life.Roach, a janitor at the church on Panco Lane, said his wife wanted painkillers for her knees on Tuesday but he told her he would get it for her. Eventually he gave her money to go to the pharmacy and when she returned to the church, she showed him the tablets and went into the washroom.
Minutes later, two men called out to him, telling him his wife was vomiting green. He immediately called for help and an ambulance arrived and took her to the hospital. “I was disturbed and I was shocked because I was not expecting that. I don’t know the minds of people, I couldn’t see her heart. “I could not see through her because when she bought the tablets she came back and showed it to me, not knowing that she had that (gramoxone) in her bag,” Roach told the T&T Guardian.
“She went into the washroom and drank it. All this time I was not aware of this. I don’t know what store she bought the tablets from, I don’t know what hardware she got the gramoxone from. I just don’t know,” he added. Asked why he felt his wife chose to end her life, he said: “Lately she had been suffering with depression. She was down because things in life affect people. “When she went for the tablets I did not know she had other ideas. I did not know what she would have done,” he said.
Lalchan-Roach’s sister, Ena Lalchan-Sookdeo, said she suffered with heart and thyroid problems and when she began to experience menopause she could not cope. Lalchan-Sookdeo said her sister also recently began to seeing things and people who were not there. “She was disturbed and that is what she was saying. She was seeing things that were not happening and she was seeing people that were not there.
“We had an appointment this month to take her to a psychiatrist but she drank this. Depression is what led her to this,” Lalchan-Sookdeo said. She said Roach spent long hours at her sister’s bedside during frequent stays at the hospital and supported her all the way. Another relative said they did not want to commit her to a mental hospital as she complained that they wanted to put her in a “mad house.”