An­na-Lisa Paul

The three peo­ple charged with child cru­el­ty and as­sault­ing a 12-year old boy have been grant­ed bail in the sum of $150,000 bail. They plead­ed not guilty yes­ter­day. Re­mand­ed in po­lice cus­tody on Thurs­day were Nigel Har­g­reaves, 40; Kendall Bap­tiste, 27; and Nasha Ba­boolal, 21, who reap­peared be­fore Mag­is­trate Chris­tine Charles.

Har­g­reaves and Bap­tiste are ac­cused of will­ful­ly ex­pos­ing Bran­don Har­g­reaves to dan­ger, putting his health at risk at Up­per Val­ley Road, while Ba­boolal was charged with as­sault­ing the mi­nor. Urg­ing the mag­is­trate not to be swayed by pub­lic opin­ion - the trio's at­tor­ney, Patrick God­son- Phillip said his clients were not flight risks and had been co-op­er­at­ing with the au­thor­i­ties.

God­son-Phillip al­so as­sured the court that Nigel Har­g­reaves would con­tin­ue to fi­nan­cial­ly sup­port his son, who had been re­leased in­to the cus­tody of a ma­ter­nal aunt in San Juan. Or­der­ing the three not to have any con­tact with the boy for the du­ra­tion of the mat­ter, Charles grant­ed each de­fen­dant bail in the amount of $50,000 with a sure­ty.

The mat­ter was ad­journed to Au­gust 23. Har­g­reaves and Bap­tiste were ar­rest­ed last Thurs­day, af­ter neigh­bours ob­served the boy locked in a ken­nel. The boy was lat­er re­moved hav­ing suf­fered bites to the head, arms and legs. Af­ter be­ing treat­ed at the Port-of-Spain Gen­er­al Hos­pi­tal, Bran­don was re­leased in­to the care of his moth­er's sis­ter. Cpl Kevin Ash­ing of the Bel­mont po­lice laid the charges.