Opposition Leader, La Brea MP join Mercedez’s vigil in Los Iros

RAD­HI­CA DE SIL­VA

Se­nior Mul­ti­me­dia Re­porter

rad­hi­[email protected]

Op­po­si­tion Leader Pen­ne­lope Beck­les and La Brea MP Clyde El­der put aside pol­i­tics on Sat­ur­day evening as they joined hun­dreds of Los Iros res­i­dents in a can­dle­light march call­ing for greater pro­tec­tion of Trinidad and To­ba­go’s chil­dren, fol­low­ing the killing of 12-year-old Mer­cedes Layne, a stu­dent at the Erin RC Pri­ma­ry School, whose bat­tered body was dis­cov­ered last Sun­day near an oil pipeline.

Ad­dress­ing mourn­ers and res­i­dents gath­ered in the south­west­ern vil­lage, Beck­les said the coun­try’s es­ca­lat­ing vi­o­lence against chil­dren de­mand­ed a unit­ed na­tion­al re­sponse.

“In the last 10 years, 73 chil­dren have lost their lives, and of those 73 chil­dren, 12 of them are girls,” Beck­les said.

Both politi­cians stressed that crime tran­scends po­lit­i­cal bound­aries and re­quires co­op­er­a­tion be­tween gov­ern­ment, op­po­si­tion and com­mu­ni­ties.

The Op­po­si­tion Leader said she had in­formed El­der in Par­lia­ment last week of her in­ten­tion to at­tend the event and praised the MP for join­ing res­i­dents in sup­port of the griev­ing fam­i­ly.

“We may be­long to dif­fer­ent po­lit­i­cal par­ties, but we are com­ing to­geth­er to­day specif­i­cal­ly for Mer­cedez be­cause we un­der­stand the chal­lenge, we un­der­stand the pain, and we un­der­stand the hurt,” Beck­les said.

Look­ing out at the crowd, she said res­i­dents were send­ing a clear mes­sage to po­lit­i­cal lead­ers.

“You are al­so say­ing to both of us and to both po­lit­i­cal par­ties, gov­ern­ment and op­po­si­tion, that we can on­ly deal with crime if we come to­geth­er and ac­knowl­edge that this is an is­sue that cross­es par­ty lines.”

Beck­les not­ed that crime af­fects every con­stituen­cy re­gard­less of po­lit­i­cal af­fil­i­a­tion.

“A crim­i­nal doesn’t de­cide whether they’re go­ing through here be­cause it’s UNC or whether it’s PNM. A bul­let doesn’t know any po­lit­i­cal bound­aries, and crime af­fects every sin­gle con­stituen­cy,” she said.

Re­flect­ing on the death of Mer­cedez, Beck­les said the tragedy had per­son­al­ly af­fect­ed her.

“When you think about a coun­try, you think about how it treats its chil­dren and how it treats its women,” she said.

She al­so called for com­mu­ni­ties to re­claim the col­lec­tive re­spon­si­bil­i­ty of rais­ing and pro­tect­ing chil­dren.

“A com­mu­ni­ty rais­es a child. And it is all of us that have to look out for our chil­dren, not just the par­ents,” Beck­les said.

El­der echoed those sen­ti­ments, urg­ing res­i­dents to en­sure their sup­port for the fam­i­ly did not end when the fu­ner­al was over.

“It is not enough for us to hold a can­dle and walk any dis­tance, and when the can­dle goes out, that pas­sion goes out,” he said.

“It is not enough to say to Mer­cedez’ moth­er, sis­ters, fa­ther, con­do­lences, we are here for you, we sup­port you, and af­ter Mer­cedez is laid to rest, we just go about our lives and leave them on their own.”

The MP said res­i­dents must con­tin­ue to pro­tect every child in the com­mu­ni­ty long af­ter the vig­ils and ex­pres­sions of grief have end­ed.

“Af­ter the mourn­ing and af­ter the griev­ing, let us en­sure that we do our part to make our coun­try a safer place,” El­der said.

De­scrib­ing him­self as both an MP and a par­ent, El­der said in­ci­dents in­volv­ing chil­dren res­onate dif­fer­ent­ly with par­ents.

“When sit­u­a­tions like this hap­pen, some­how as a par­ent it rocks you dif­fer­ent­ly,” he said.

“So let us look at all the chil­dren in our so­ci­ety as our chil­dren and let us do our part to pro­tect our chil­dren.”

Ear­li­er, com­mu­ni­ty leader De­clan St Louis said res­i­dents were unit­ed in grief and frus­tra­tion over re­peat­ed acts of vi­o­lence against chil­dren.

“Folks are fed up with these things hap­pen­ing time and time again where chil­dren are the vic­tims of these heinous crimes, and we are say­ing no tonight,” he said.

“There is strength in uni­ty, and we are ask­ing that the folks unite.”

Mer­cedez’ great-aunt, Michae­line Jones-Hen­ry, thanked res­i­dents for their sup­port dur­ing what she de­scribed as a dev­as­tat­ing pe­ri­od for the fam­i­ly.

“I am over­whelmed by the love and sup­port that we have been re­ceiv­ing as a fam­i­ly,” she said.

She added that the tragedy should serve as a les­son for com­mu­ni­ties to be more vig­i­lant.

“We know now that we can­not take things for grant­ed. We know now that we have to screen peo­ple more,” Jones-Hen­ry said.

Al­so ad­dress­ing the gath­er­ing was Hunters Search and Res­cue Team founder Val­lence Ramb­harat, who led the crowd in a chant of “Leave our chil­dren alone.”

“We must draw the line in the sand and say leave our chil­dren alone,” Ramb­harat said.

The vig­il end­ed with prayers, can­dles and calls for uni­ty as res­i­dents vowed to ho­n­our Mer­cedes’ mem­o­ry by work­ing to make their com­mu­ni­ty safer for chil­dren.

Richard Re­nalis, 26, of Pa­lo Seco, has since been charged with Mer­cedez’s mur­der.

The fu­ner­al ser­vice for Mer­cedez will take place to­mor­row at the Sev­enth-day Ad­ven­tist Church in Erin.