Don’t blame ‘the children’

Neighbours who live near the house on Chin Fong Alley #1, Sobo Village, where the baby was found also made an appeal for psychiatric help for the child’s grandmother who is only 40-years-old.

The grandmother and three of six children-- an 18-year-old young woman, a boy, 15, and a 13-year-old girl-- were taken to the Point Fortin Area Hospital yesterday for “medical checkups”, police investigators disclosed.

They confirmed further examinations will be done on the family members who remained in custody at the La Brea Police Station, up to last evening.

Psychiatric evaluations are yet to be done.

Last Thursday police, called in by concerned neighbours, went to the wooden structure where the grandmother lives with her children. They discovered the remains of the baby, named Mercy, who was born on February 8 to a teenager. Her skeletal frame was still clad in a disposable diaper, a jersey and a brown hat, and covered with a blanket inside a crib protected by a mosquito net.

Police detained the grandmother, who initially told them the baby was asleep, together with three of her children.

An autopsy performed on Friday afternoon at the Forensic Sciences Centre, St James, revealed the cause of death was inconclusive.

When Sunday Newsday returned to the close-knit community yesterday, several residents were shocked that there was a decomposing baby inside the house for “so much months”. They said they became suspicious that something was amiss, given a “ drastic change in attitude” by the grandmother.

“We did not have a clue! She (grandmother) claimed the baby as hers. She alone used to walk the baby but then that stopped.

But we continued to see baby clothes on the line. Do not blame the children! they are innocent in all of this. They are very respectable children, very, very pleasant,” said a resident.

Another suggested the grandmother, a single parent, receive psychiatric care.

“She needs help. Something traumatic must have caused her to behave in such an insane manner. We are hearing that the baby stayed in her room and no one was allowed inside there.

She even told residents that one of her daughter’s had fibroid and that was not so,” claimed another neighbour.

The wooden structure is not wired for electricity and the children, with the exception of the 18-year-old, are school dropouts.

Brighton/Vessigny councillor Gerald Debesette yesterday said although he did not know the family he was sadden by the news. Like neighbours of the detained relatives, the councillor called for psychiatric evaluations to be done.

“It is sad. It is scary. That was a shocking thing. There is a very thin line between sanity and in sanity. I went to visit relatives but no one was at the house,” Sgt Taitt and Sgt Gokool of the La Brea Police Station are in the charge of the investigations.