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Saturday, July 26, 2025

Frantic dash fails to save toddler

by

20140603

Po­lice are in­ves­ti­gat­ing the death of a 23-month-old ba­by who was found float­ing in a pond at his fam­i­ly's Ma­yaro home on Sun­day.De­spite be­ing grabbed up by a fam­i­ly friend, who ran with him sev­er­al hun­dred me­tres from their Alex­is Street home to the Ma­yaro Dis­trict Health Fa­cil­i­ty, lit­tle Kris­ton Obadelle Gon­za­les was pro­nounced dead on ar­rival at the fa­cil­i­ty.Up un­til yes­ter­day, the child's par­ent's were as­sist­ing Ma­yaro po­lice with their in­ves­ti­ga­tion in­to how Kris­ton end­ed up in the pond.

Po­lice said the child's fa­ther was asleep and his moth­er was around the house when he wan­dered in­to the yard.Short­ly af­ter 1 pm, the fam­i­ly's neigh­bour Dex­ter Cal­liste saw Kris­ton face­down in the pond and alert­ed rel­a­tives. He was quick­ly tak­en out but de­spite at­tempts to re­sus­ci­tate him he was un­re­spon­sive.Dur­ing the con­fu­sion, An­tho­ny Bel­ton picked up the child and ran through the Edric Con­nor Park to the health fa­cil­i­ty in the hope of sav­ing him but his dash was in vain as med­ical per­son­nel al­so could not re­vive the child.

Po­lice said he had been un­der­wa­ter for too long. There were no marks of vi­o­lence on his body.The child's fa­ther is a Bap­tist min­is­ter who does bap­tisms in two man-made ponds in the yard. Po­lice said both are four-feet deep.Af­ter vis­it­ing the fam­i­ly on Sun­day, Ma­yaro/Guayagua­yare coun­cil­lor Ky­ron James, while say­ing he was not cast­ing as­per­sions on how Kris­ton died, called on par­ents to be more vig­i­lant while watch­ing over their chil­dren.Al­though many peo­ple might cast judg­ment on the fam­i­ly, he said there was a need to sup­port them dur­ing their time of grief.

As in the case of 17-month-old Jae­don Cud­joe, who died af­ter his grand­fa­ther al­leged­ly for­got him in a car, James said there were un­guard­ed mo­ments.

"At the end of the day, this is a loss, not on­ly for the fam­i­ly but the com­mu­ni­ty of Ma­yaro. We should all come to­geth­er to give the fam­i­ly the sup­port that they would des­per­ate­ly need in their time of grief."Ac­ci­dents hap­pen and to lose a child in that man­ner it is enough to en­dure. "I am not say­ing that they were neg­li­gent or they weren't. I think that we as par­ents, we need to be very vig­i­lant when it comes to keep­ing an eye on our chil­dren," James said.WPC Hamid of the Ma­yaro Po­lice Sta­tion is con­tin­u­ing in­ves­ti­ga­tions.


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