Jensen La Vende

The com­mu­ni­ty of Mara­cas, St Joseph, was left be­wil­dered and in mourn­ing yes­ter­day, af­ter one-year-old Ja­cob Munroe, who was re­port­ed kid­napped on Tues­day, was found wrapped in a pur­ple sheet in a cesspit close to where he was al­leged­ly snatched by three men.Res­i­dents could not be­lieve that a ba­by who had all his life be­fore him could be killed in such a bru­tal way by his al­leged ab­duc­tors.

Ac­cord­ing to po­lice re­ports, around 12.30 pm on Tues­day, Ja­cob's fa­ther, Al­lan Thomas, was at his San­tari­ta Trace, Llu­en­go Vil­lage, Mara­cas, St Joseph, home when three armed men en­tered and de­mand­ed that Thomas hand over a gun he was hid­ing for some­one.Af­ter Thomas re­fused, the men are al­leged to have or­dered Thomas to slit his own wrist and drink a flam­ma­ble sub­stance be­lieved to be pitch oil.

The men then grabbed the child and fled the home.Rel­a­tives con­tact­ed po­lice and an am­bu­lance, which ar­rived short­ly af­ter­wards and took Thomas to the Er­ic Williams Med­ical Sci­ences Com­plex in Mt Hope.Po­lice then start­ed a man­hunt for the kid­nap­pers and lit­tle Ja­cob.Yes­ter­day, how­ev­er, around 1.30 pm, the grue­some dis­cov­ery was made.

Po­lice vis­it­ed the area where Thomas lives to gath­er more in­for­ma­tion from rel­a­tives and neigh­bours, as well as foren­sic ev­i­dence af­ter they dis­cov­ered the body so close to the fam­i­ly's home.Around 4 pm, the child's 20-year-old moth­er, Sharisse Munroe, ar­rived on the scene in a po­lice ve­hi­cle with her sis­ter. The moth­er ar­rived just in time to see her on­ly child's body be­ing car­ried away in a hearse.Griev­ing rel­a­tives said the child was tak­en to vis­it his fa­ther on Sun­day so that the two could have bond­ed.

Res­i­dents of the area ex­pressed shock and dis­gust over the find.Many vowed that if Ja­cob was their child "some­body would ah dead too."Most of those gath­ered around the crime scene were young men who said they too were fa­thers and could not imag­ine who or why any­one would want to hurt an in­no­cent child.Po­lice say they are in­ves­ti­gat­ing the kid­nap­ping while ex­plor­ing oth­er leads in­to the death of the child.Thomas's rel­a­tives, who live sev­er­al feet up an in­cline from where he lives, were seen hug­ging each oth­er and cry­ing.

A post-mortem will be done on Ja­cob's body to­day at the Foren­sic Sci­ence Cen­tre in St James to de­ter­mine a cause of death.Thomas, a taxi dri­ver, was still ward­ed at the EWM­SC un­der po­lice guard up to last night.In an un­re­lat­ed mat­ter, po­lice are al­so in­ves­ti­gat­ing the al­leged kid­nap­ping of 16-year-old Ke­fa Forbes, who was snatched at Li­brary Cor­ner, San Fer­nan­do, on Mon­day.Forbes, a stu­dent of the San Fer­nan­do East Sec­ondary School, was even­tu­al­ly re­leased in Point Fortin around noon yes­ter­day.

Ac­cord­ing to her 50-year-old moth­er, Jen­nifer Williams, Ke­fa was re­turn­ing home around 9 am on Mon­day, af­ter run­ning er­rands at JTA Su­per­mar­ket at Carl­ton Cen­tre, when she board­ed a taxi. How­ev­er, she was al­leged­ly ab­duct­ed by the ve­hi­cle's oc­cu­pants.

Speak­ing at her Pleas­antville home yes­ter­day, Williams, a moth­er of sev­en who had her left leg am­pu­tat­ed be­cause of di­a­betes in 2009, said that on Tues­day, she got a call from the kid­nap­pers ask­ing for a $5,000 ran­som or else they would hurt her daugh­ter.

Williams said hours lat­er her daugh­ter called and told her she had been kid­napped by a girl and two Rasta­far­i­an man, and that she was tak­en to a house in north Trinidad where they locked her in a room. She said Ke­fa re­port­ed that she was not sex­u­al­ly as­sault­ed but was slapped around sev­er­al times."When the kid­nap­per called me, I told him I on­ly have one leg, I am a dis­abled per­son and I live on dis­abil­i­ty grants. I asked him, 'where will I get that mon­ey?'" Williams said.

Williams said she knew she could not raise the mon­ey so she called Ke­fa's phone yes­ter­day and threat­ened the kid­nap­pers, say­ing she knew peo­ple who would hunt them down.She said they even­tu­al­ly re­leased Ke­fa and she was picked up by a taxi dri­ver and tak­en to the Point Fortin Po­lice Sta­tion.

–With re­port­ing by KEVON FELMINE