After spending almost a month at the St Ann's Psychiatric Hospital, Dwayne Lewis, the man accused of murdering six-year-old Keyana Cumberbatch, has been sent to the Remand Yard, in Arouca.Lewis, 28, Cumberbatch's stepfather, was sent to the hospital to undergo a psychiatric evaluation after he first appeared in court charged with the child's murder on December 16.When he reappeared in the Arima First Court on Monday, his evaluation report was presented to Senior Magistrate Indrani Cedeno.
After reviewing it Cedeno decided to send Lewis, a security guard from Maloney Gardens, to the remand facility at Golden Grove Road, Arouca, having deemed he was fit to stand trial.The report was not read in court and was not disclosed to Lewis's lawyer, Fareed Ali.
During Monday's hearing, Ali asked police prosecutors several questions about his client's arrest. The officers said they could not answer the questions as they would be dealt with by a state prosecutor from the Office of the Director of Public Prosecutions (DPP).When Ali asked if a prosecutor had been appointed, the complainant in the case, PC Gonzales, said he had given the case file to a senior officer and it was yet to be handed over to the DPP.
On November 25, Cumberbatch, a second-year pupil at the St Barbara's Shouter Baptist Primary School, was on her way to her grandmother's house, near her mother Simone Williams's apartment, when she went missing.Three days later, police investigated a foul scent at her family's three-bedroom apartment and found her body stuffed in a plastic barrel. A post-mortem showed she had been struck in the head with such force that her skull was cracked. She had also been sexually assaulted while unconscious.
Lewis was arrested the day after Cumberbatch went missing but spent almost two weeks in hospital before being charged after suffering a series of asthma attacks.Lewis will reappear in court on February 10.