Immigrant dream ends in tragedy for two families

Misadventure

Carvalho, 23, of Plymouth Street was found hanging in his prison cell on August 20. He died at a Bristol hospital a few days later.

Accused

Accused of stabbing to death another Goan immigrant Jose Raimundo Pereira, 40, Carvalho’s apparent suicide cast an even darker shadow on the close-knit Goan community now settled in Swindon.

“I would have wanted him to face the courts and the consequences of his action but may be this is god’s justice… It is hard because Raymond’s death still hurts,” Maria Susan Pereira, Jose Raimundo’s wife told the Swindon advertiser. She said she was determined to stay on in the UK with her four-year-old son Samuel.

Raymond who worked on night shift was found on Manchester Road, Swindon, with multiple stab wounds on May 20.

Though the police arrived, he died at the scene. No clear motive was established for Carvalho’s action.

The Pereiras come from Goa Velha, Agaçaim, a village that can no longer put together a football team because most of its young men have migrated to Swindon.

 A hardworking family man, Raymond’s death has left his mother in Goa inconsolable. His younger brother works in Swindon too.

Little Goa

Nicknamed Little Goa for the 9,000-strong Goan community that has settled there for long, Swindon, an industrial estate on the fringes of London employs hundreds of Goan in car assembly lines, food processing, restaurants and the catering business.

 “They are the invisible workforce that emerges at night to wash the windows of buildings or make late-night deliveries,” a Goan expat said.     

Over 15,000 Goans of the nearly 100,000 settled in the UK have made it there in recent years with the Portuguese nationality, says GoanVoice editor Eddie Fernandes.