In an unusual move, homicide detectives charged the suspect in the murder of Keyana Cumberbatch on his hospital bed late yesterday evening.Despite this latest development, he is not expected to be taken to court today as his doctors told the police he should remain warded for observation. The charge was laid more than five days after investigators got advice from Director of Public Prosecutions (DPP) Roger Gaspard, SC.
Shortly after receiving the advice last Thursday investigators had to take the suspect for treatment after he suffered a serious asthma attack.Police said previously that the charge could not be laid until he was discharged by doctors at the Eric Williams Medical Sciences Complex.However, around 5.30 pm, detectives of the Region Two Homicide Bureau visited the ward where he was being held under police guard to lay the charge.
In a telephone interview last night, the suspect's attorney, Fareed Ali, said police also took his client's fingerprints which would be used to obtain his criminal tracing to be presented in court when he eventually appeared.Ali also said his client's mental-health evaluation, which began on Monday, had not been completed. The psychiatrists doing the evaluation said they wanted to interview the suspect a second time later this week.Ali said his client's condition had not improved and he was still having problems breathing.
"His blood pressure went very high after they finished processing him," he added..Cumberbatch went missing on November 25. She was last seen leaving her Maloney Gardens home on her way to her grandmother's apartment one building away.Her decomposing body was found three days later in her apartment, inside a plastic bag in a cargo barrel next to her mother Simone Williams's bed. Cumberbatch was hit in the head so severely that her skull was cracked. She was then sexually assaulted, an autopsy report revealed.
Last Wednesday, Cumberbatch was buried at the Crown Street public cemetery, Tacarigua, after a closed-casket ceremony at the Council of Elders Spiritual Shouter Baptist Empowerment Hall, D'Abadie.