Boys took Sean fishing

Police said yesterday they were on the verge of getting a crucial statement in the case. Two suspects, 14 and 16 years old, will remain in custody this weekend until charges are laid against them.

Depending on the outcome of last night’s meeting with the DPP, the two boys could be taken before a Couva magistrate on Monday.

In another development, a much younger boy who was in company with Sean and a group of boys on Sunday, told police he left the group because he did not want to get in trouble with his mother. The boy, who lives a few streets away from Sean, said he felt lucky to be alive.

The young boy who spoke to Newsday in the presence of his mother said, “I was trembling when I heard the news on Tuesday that Sean died.”

The young boy retraced the steps he took on Sunday when he met Sean with the group of boys. He said, “I was watching cricket when one of the boys came up the road and said they were going fishing. Sean was standing on the road by a culvert and they called him.”

The boy said he and Sean walked with the group through a trace and a canefield to a river. “I was watching them,” he said. “They (the group of boys) caught a ‘mamatater’ (a local fish) and put it in a pan with some water.”

The boy told Newsday he decided it was time to return home. The boy’s mother said she had previously warned her children not to play with that group of boys, since one of them struck her husband with a brick sometime ago.

The boy said when he turned to walk out of the canefield leaving Sean in their company, the older boys called out to him to come back. “I started to walk out,” he told Newsday, “and they said ‘stop’, but I kept on walking.” The boy said he turned back once to face the group and was met with an angry look.

The boy said when he left the group, Sean was in good spirits. “He (Sean) was happy and laughing with them. They were making jokes and talking like normal,” he recalled.

The young boy was interviewed by police twice on Thursday after Sean’s funeral.

Yesterday, Sean’s grandmother Golsin Moonie, said she warned Sean and her other grandchildren to keep away from some boys who lived in the neighbourhood.

The warning came after the boys had locked Sean’s five-year-old cousin Kyle, in an old stove thrown on the roadway. Moonie, 62, told Newsday, “I say if they could lock up a boy in a stove, they ain’t good at all.”