Derek Achong

One-year-old ba­by Ja­cob Munroe died of mas­sive head in­juries and his body was dumped in a cesspit be­hind his home af­ter he was killed.This was the re­sult of an au­top­sy on his body at the Foren­sic Sci­ence Cen­tre, St James, yes­ter­day morn­ing.The post mortem was per­formed by foren­sic pathol­o­gist Dr Hughvon des Vi­gnes, who al­so found the tod­dler had been smoth­ered. Des Vi­gnes' re­port al­so re­vealed there were bruis­es to his but­tocks, in­di­cat­ing he was beat­en be­fore be­ing killed.

He, how­ev­er, did not find any ev­i­dence that the child was sex­u­al­ly as­sault­ed.Munroe's au­top­sy was de­layed af­ter his fa­ther and moth­er's rel­a­tives, who came to the cen­tre to iden­ti­fy his body and wit­ness the pro­ce­dure, had a small dis­agree­ment.Munroe's grand­par­ents on his fa­ther's side ar­rived at the cen­tre ear­ly yes­ter­day and iden­ti­fied the child's body. When the child's moth­er and her rel­a­tives ar­rived hours lat­er, staff at the cen­tre in­formed them they could no longer view his body.

"You should have reached here at 9 am. The next time you will see the ba­by is at the fu­ner­al," an uniden­ti­fied staff mem­ber said to Ja­cob's moth­er, Cherisse Munroe, who quick­ly burst in­to tears."How you could do that. I can't even see my ba­by," the child's moth­er said to her in-laws as she stormed out of the build­ing in tears.Both sets of rel­a­tives then en­gaged in a heat­ed dis­course which on­ly end­ed af­ter fu­ner­al home staff in­ter­vened.

When a team from the T&T Guardian vis­it­ed the cen­tre to speak to rel­a­tives they all re­fused to com­ment."We were not there. Read the news­pa­pers. What­ev­er the po­lice said there is the truth," the fa­ther's rel­a­tives said when asked for com­ment.Ac­cord­ing to po­lice re­ports, on Tues­day af­ter­noon Munroe's rel­a­tive con­tact­ed St Joseph Po­lice say­ing the child was kid­napped from the fam­i­ly's home at San­tari­ta Trace, Llu­en­go Vil­lage, Mara­cas, St Joseph.

The rel­a­tive claimed three men en­tered the house, as­sault­ed him and de­mand­ed he hand over a gun he was hid­ing for some­one. The men then grabbed the child and fled the house,Around 1.30 pm on Wednes­day, po­lice in­ves­ti­gat­ing the child's dis­ap­pear­ance, searched the fam­i­ly's prop­er­ty where they found the child's body, which was wrapped in pur­ple cloth, in a cesspit.The rel­a­tive was tak­en to the Er­ic Williams Med­ical Sci­ences Com­plex, Mt Hope, where he re­mains ward­ed in a sta­ble con­di­tion and un­der po­lice guard.

Homi­cide de­tec­tives said they did not be­lieve the rel­a­tive's ver­sion of the events and were ex­pect­ed to in­ter­ro­gate him once he was dis­charged from hos­pi­tal.In­sp Mark Ma­haraj, Sgts Rene Kat­wa­roo and Ve­tus Her­nan­dez of the North­ern Di­vi­sion are in­ves­ti­gat­ing.