Pe­ter Ray Blood

For­give me, but to­day I had every in­ten­tion of writ­ing about to­mor­row's Kaiso Fi­es­ta (Na­tion­al Ca­lyp­so Monarch semi­fi­nal) at Skin­ner Park, San Fer­nan­do, and last Sun­day's Na­tion­al Panora­ma semi­fi­nals, but I am un­able to. Since Sun­day, my thoughts and con­cen­tra­tion have been reg­u­lar­ly in­ter­rupt­ed by the death of eight-year-old Daniel Guer­ra in Gas­par­il­lo. I have a cou­ple grands around that age and my gut con­vuls­es each time I re­mem­ber Daniel and think about what I can do to pro­tect them and all the beau­ti­ful in­no­cent eight-year-olds I know.

As I was writ­ing this, the news stat­ed that an au­top­sy showed that Daniel died by drown­ing. But, giv­en the ini­tial news of his dis­ap­pear­ance, giv­en to the me­dia on the week­end by his grand­moth­er Shirley In­dars­ingh, about Daniel be­ing seen by a neigh­bour on his way back home from a neigh­bour­hood par­lour tot­ing a black plas­tic bag, and an eye­wit­ness ac­count of him get­ting in­to a mo­tor ve­hi­cle, some­thing is very fishy about this en­tire trag­ic in­ci­dent. News of Daniel's death spread like wild­fire through the Queen's Park Sa­van­nah on Sun­day evening as Black­ber­ry own­ers trans­mit­ted BB im­ages of Daniel's bloat­ed body.

Many pan lovers were heard lament­ing his death even as steel­bands com­pet­ed on stage in the Na­tion­al Panora­ma semi­fi­nals. While noth­ing I do or say can bring Daniel back, but I can make a plea to all par­ents to give your tinymites and young chil­dren the same ad­vice my moth­er gave me many moons ago-"do not talk to strangers," re­gard­less of how nice they ap­pear to be, or what nice gifts they come bear­ing. As said be­fore, for­give me for this trun­cat­ed edi­tion of Pulse, but do en­joy the im­ages of last Sun­day's pan semis.