Baby burnt to death

AN argument over $40 resulted in the death of a three-month-old baby girl, who perished in a fire which gutted her home during the early hours of yesterday morning. Police said a lighted candle caused the wooden shack on King’s Wharf, where baby Precious was asleep, to go up in flames around 3 am. While Precious was asleep, a police report stated that the child’s mother, Lorna Skeet, 40, was elsewhere in the house engaged in a heated argument with a man over $40. The report stated that at some point during the verbal exchange, Skeet felt physically threatened and ran out of the house. Skeet, who spent most of yesterday lying on a bench in grief at the San Fernando CID office, told police that she left her baby sleeping on a mattress, and made a frantic dash out of the shack to seek the $40 from a relative to pay the man.

Skeet returned 45 minutes later to see the shack, located in the Wharf’s seafront squatting community, ablaze. Skeet’s neighbour, Alister Blackman, told Newsday she was awakened by the cracking sound of burning wood at around 3 am. “The first thing on my mind was the baby, but the place was done blazing up. Nobody could do anything to help,” Blackman said. The shack was gutted before firemen from the Mon Repos Fire Headquarters arrived on the scene. Police said Precious, who was burnt beyond recognition, was sleeping on a mattress which apparently caught fire when the lighted candle fell on it. Skeet, who has two other children who live in another shack nearby, became so hysterical on seeing the house on fire that she attempted to run into the burning shack to save her baby. Neighbours told Newsday they had to restrain the woman. Insp Hilary Bereton is investigating.