OUTRAGE OVER 12-YEAR-OLD’S MURDER

KEVON FELMINE

Se­nior Re­porter

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To­day should have been a day of ex­cite­ment for 12-year-old Mer­cedez Layne and her school­mates on a trip to the Mt St Bene­dict Monastery in St Au­gus­tine. In­stead, her class­mates and teach­ers will join her fam­i­ly in mourn­ing her death af­ter the miss­ing Erin school­girl was found dead near an oil well yes­ter­day morn­ing, in an­oth­er trag­ic case of vi­o­lence against a child that has out­raged the coun­try.

A fran­tic search for the Stan­dard Four St Fran­cis Erin RC Pri­ma­ry School stu­dent end­ed in hor­ror yes­ter­day, when her par­tial­ly nude body was dis­cov­ered off Cara­pal Road, Erin.

Mean­while, the T&T Po­lice Ser­vice (TTPS) last night re­vealed that a sus­pect was in cus­tody in con­nec­tion with the child’s killing.

The dis­cov­ery con­firmed the worst fears of her fa­ther, Ronald Cabr­era, who said he sensed some­thing was ter­ri­bly wrong from the mo­ment he learned she had dis­ap­peared on Sat­ur­day af­ter­noon.

Speak­ing at his Erin home yes­ter­day, Cabr­era strug­gled to hold back tears as he spoke about his daugh­ter. He re­called re­ceiv­ing a call short­ly be­fore 4 pm on Sat­ur­day from one of Mer­cedez’s old­er sis­ters, ask­ing whether the child was at his home.

Cabr­era, who was not there at the time, was told that Mer­cedez had spent some time with her el­der sis­ter at Loren­sotte Trace. Her sis­ter’s grand­fa­ther had placed her in a pur­ple wag­on to trav­el the five-minute jour­ney home to Los Iros Road. Hours lat­er, there was still no sign of her.

Cabr­era said he im­me­di­ate­ly be­came con­cerned and filed a re­port with the Erin po­lice.

“Hon­est­ly, in my mind, I al­ready knew to ex­pect the worst be­cause it was not a kid­nap­ping. I re­al­ly have noth­ing, so who is go­ing to kid­nap any of my chil­dren? Au­to­mat­i­cal­ly, I al­ready knew, oh gosh, if you do not find this lit­tle child, it is de­ceased,” Cabr­era said. Po­lice of­fi­cers, vol­un­teers and mem­bers of Sham’s Hunters’ Search and Res­cue Team joined in the search ef­fort, comb­ing sev­er­al ar­eas through­out Sat­ur­day night.

As he stood out­side a shop yes­ter­day morn­ing, Cabr­era said a res­i­dent ap­proached him with trou­bling news. Work­ers who had gone to check on an oil well had re­port­ed­ly stum­bled up­on a body and alert­ed po­lice.

Cabr­era im­me­di­ate­ly went to the po­lice sta­tion and then to the scene, where his worst fears were re­alised.

“My daugh­ter was in a jer­sey alone; no oth­er pieces of cloth­ing. I am sure she was dealt with in a very vi­o­lent man­ner be­cause she was beat­en on the head. In my mind, it is the on­ly rea­son there was blood pour­ing from her ears. Ap­par­ent­ly, she fought with them, and they just de­cid­ed, okay.”

The griev­ing fa­ther de­scribed Mer­cedez as a shy child who re­coiled from the touch of strangers and was com­fort­able on­ly around fam­i­ly mem­bers.

“Some sick bas­tard killed my daugh­ter. She was found on­ly with her top on. That lit­tle child is small.”

Cabr­era said peo­ple of­ten be­lieve jus­tice ex­ists with­in the sys­tem, but ar­gued that it of­fers lit­tle com­fort to par­ents forced to bury a child. While ex­press­ing ap­pre­ci­a­tion for the ef­forts of of­fi­cers who re­spond­ed to the re­port and mo­bilised search teams, he said he could not sit back and wait for an­swers. Cabr­era said he does not be­lieve his daugh­ter was her killers’ first vic­tim. Speak­ing through tears, he said the loss of his daugh­ter was al­most im­pos­si­ble to com­pre­hend.

“It re­al­ly is a heartrend­ing sit­u­a­tion. I look at my lit­tle daugh­ter, who hasn’t even start­ed life yet. It is like my daugh­ter had been os­tracised, and be­cause of it, I feel os­tracised. There is no way I am go­ing to play a good boy. I am say­ing it open­ly, I am not go­ing to stop look­ing for these gen­tle­men.”

He re­called the last con­ver­sa­tion he had with his daugh­ter a week ago, when she called ask­ing him to bring chick­en. The mem­o­ry now re­mains one of the fi­nal mo­ments he shared with her.

Soon af­ter news be­gan to cir­cu­late that the child was miss­ing, how­ev­er, res­i­dents shared in­for­ma­tion with po­lice in­ves­ti­ga­tors. Po­lice said this in­for­ma­tion helped them find the sus­pect’s ve­hi­cle, which was found aban­doned along Beach Road, Pa­lo Seco, around 1 am yes­ter­day. And with the help of CCTV footage they al­so re­ceived, of­fi­cers were al­so able to piece to­geth­er the events just be­fore Mer­cedez left her grand­fa­ther’s com­mu­ni­ty.

Speak­ing with Guardian Me­dia yes­ter­day, Shamshudeen Ayube, com­man­der of the vol­un­teer search and res­cue team, said mem­bers joined po­lice and res­i­dents in search­ing for the child from Sat­ur­day night.

In­for­ma­tion re­ceived dur­ing the search even­tu­al­ly led teams to fo­cus on the Cara­pal Road area as of­fi­cers con­duct­ed an ex­ten­sive op­er­a­tion.

Af­ter hours of search­ing through­out the night, teams re­sumed their ef­forts around 5.30 am yes­ter­day. Ayube said the out­come was es­pe­cial­ly dif­fi­cult for mem­bers of the search team. Re­call­ing the suc­cess­ful re­cov­ery of an­oth­er miss­ing child in the area sev­er­al years ago, he said this search un­for­tu­nate­ly end­ed in tragedy.

As a search and res­cue or­gan­i­sa­tion ded­i­cat­ed to find­ing miss­ing peo­ple, Ayube said com­mu­ni­ties must be­come more vig­i­lant in pro­tect­ing chil­dren.

“Our fore­par­ents pro­tect­ed us, and we grew up and reached ma­tu­ri­ty. We have to do the same thing for these young chil­dren, so we are ask­ing peo­ple in and around our com­mu­ni­ties: let us be more re­spon­si­ble in say­ing things, do­ing things to­wards these lit­tle chil­dren. “They are our fu­ture, and if you de­stroy them from an ear­ly age, we don’t know what we will pro­duce in the fu­ture, so let us hope and pray that we can be more vig­i­lant,” Ayube said.

Op­po­si­tion Leader Pen­ne­lope Beck­les has ex­pressed con­do­lences to the child’s fam­i­ly, de­scrib­ing the in­ci­dent as a tragedy that has shak­en the na­tion.

In a state­ment yes­ter­day, Beck­les said, “This dev­as­tat­ing news of her death has shocked and sad­dened the en­tire coun­try. Our thoughts and prayers are with her fam­i­ly, friends, school­mates, teach­ers at Erin RC School, and the wider Erin com­mu­ni­ty as they con­front an unimag­in­able loss.”

She al­so thanked mem­bers of the Po­lice Ser­vice (TTPS), the search and res­cue team, vol­un­teers and oth­er cit­i­zens who as­sist­ed in the search. Beck­les said the in­ci­dent high­light­ed the need for stronger mea­sures to pro­tect chil­dren and im­prove pub­lic safe­ty.

“The ap­par­ent rise in in­ci­dents in­volv­ing miss­ing and ab­duct­ed chil­dren in re­cent months war­rants ur­gent and co­or­di­nat­ed ac­tion by the State to strength­en child pro­tec­tion mea­sures, im­prove pub­lic safe­ty sys­tems, and en­hance com­mu­ni­ty aware­ness.”

Beck­les urged par­ents and guardians to re­main vig­i­lant and pay close at­ten­tion to the safe­ty and where­abouts of their chil­dren. She called on cit­i­zens to sup­port law en­force­ment ef­forts to en­sure those re­spon­si­ble are brought to jus­tice.

Na­tion­al Coun­cil of Par­ent-Teacher As­so­ci­a­tions pres­i­dent Wal­ter Stew­art yes­ter­day said it was an­oth­er sad day for the na­tion, as cit­i­zens mourned the loss of an­oth­er child.

Ex­tend­ing con­do­lences to Mer­cedez’s fam­i­ly, friends and school­mates, Stew­art said, “No words can ad­e­quate­ly com­fort a fam­i­ly griev­ing the loss of a loved one un­der such heart­break­ing cir­cum­stances. As par­ents, ed­u­ca­tors and cit­i­zens, we share in the sad­ness that has to­day en­gulfed this fam­i­ly and com­mu­ni­ty. While the cir­cum­stances sur­round­ing this tragedy con­tin­ue to be ex­am­ined, it serves as a painful and time­ly re­minder of the col­lec­tive re­spon­si­bil­i­ty we all bear to safe­guard our na­tion’s gems: our chil­dren,” Stew­art said.

He added, “Our chil­dren do not de­serve this. They de­serve to learn, grow and trav­el with­in com­mu­ni­ties feel­ing safe, pro­tect­ed and se­cure.”