IATF officers bring joy to girl who fell into river

An­na-Lisa Paul

Se­nior Re­porter

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Two months af­ter be­ing res­cued by po­lice of­fi­cers when she was swept in­to the East Dry Riv­er in Port-of-Spain dur­ing a heavy down­pour, Abi­gail Joseph smiled broad­ly yes­ter­day as those very of­fi­cers re­turned to de­liv­er her an ear­ly Christ­mas gift.

Run­ning out of her Ward Lane, Bel­mont home to greet the of­fi­cers bare­foot, the eight-year-old could hard­ly con­tain her ex­cite­ment and en­thu­si­asm as she hugged PCs Den­wayne Nep­tune and Quin­cy Tay­lor of the In­ter Agency Task Force (IATF).

Teas­ing her as they proud­ly hand­ed over the Sam­sung Galaxy Tablet, along with a ham­per to her moth­er, Chris­tiane Hyde-Joseph, the of­fi­cers, who are at­tached to the Dun­can Street Po­lice Post, qui­et­ly con­firmed they had been “keep­ing a watch­ful eye on the fam­i­ly since.”

Joseph shot in­to the lime­light on Oc­to­ber 6, af­ter she top­pled in­to a storm drain in Bel­mont and end­ed up be­ing swept in­to the East Dry Riv­er.

She was even­tu­al­ly res­cued by the of­fi­cers and Harpe Place res­i­dent Dil­lon Ram­sey near the Besson Street Po­lice Sta­tion.

When asked what she had asked San­ta Claus for, Joseph shy­ly ad­mit­ted she was “good” and “hap­py” to have re­ceived the tablet—and that she had ful­ly re­cov­ered from her trau­mat­ic or­deal.

Prompt­ed by her mum to ad­dress the of­fi­cers, she con­tin­ued smil­ing and said, “Thank you very much.”

Hug­ging her daugh­ter, Hyde-Joseph said al­though the in­ci­dent forced her to quit her job af­ter the Chil­dren’s Au­thor­i­ty stepped in, she still has a lot to be grate­ful for as this year comes to an end.

“Every­thing is re­al­ly good so far, even though I had was to stop work and so on, but every­thing is falling in­to place. Again, I want to say thank God and thank you to the of­fi­cers and them, and thanks for the con­tri­bu­tions and the gift­ing for her as well. I just want to say thank you,” she said.

Hyde-Joseph is look­ing for­ward to the pos­i­tiv­i­ty of this year con­tin­u­ing in­to 2026.

Asked what prompt­ed the of­fi­cers to vis­it the fam­i­ly, PC Tay­lor told Guardian Me­dia, “It’s God’s bless­ings, noth­ing else. That is the rea­son why we came here to­day. To en­sure she has a blessed and Mer­ry Christ­mas...is all we could give to her.”

Tay­lor, who had been the one to jump in­to the riv­er to se­cure Joseph, ac­knowl­edged, “It felt so good to see her smile! She thought we wasn’t com­ing, but here we are.”

PC Nep­tune echoed sim­i­lar sen­ti­ments, say­ing, “We are thank­ful this day has ma­te­ri­alised, and we were able to present this young la­dy with our ap­pre­ci­a­tion, for the fact that God would have em­pow­ered us that day to do what we did to pre­serve her life.”

The two of­fi­cers ad­mit­ted to be­ing hum­bled at the op­por­tu­ni­ty to take mon­ey out of their own pock­ets to pur­chase the tablet, along with a cash do­na­tion—which they said had brought un­told joy to the de­serv­ing fam­i­ly.