Jensen La Vende

Two chil­dren are now dead af­ter they both drowned in sep­a­rate in­stances be­tween yes­ter­day and Sun­day.One of the two chil­dren, Jemimah Agard, five, drowned mo­ments af­ter a swim­ming les­son at the Young Men's Chris­t­ian As­so­ci­a­tion (YM­CA) pool at Wright­son Road, Port-of-Spain.Her moth­er, Je­mil­ia Forde, and fam­i­ly are now seek­ing an­swers form those re­spon­si­ble for su­per­vis­ing the child dur­ing the ac­tiv­i­ty.Ac­cord­ing to po­lice re­ports, Agard, of Rose Hill, Laven­tille, a pupil of Sharon's Nurs­ery School, Wood­brook, was part of a class which went to the YM­CA for swim­ming lessons be­tween 9 am and 10 am.Af­ter the class end­ed and the chil­dren went to change, lit­tle Jemimah re­port­ed­ly asked to use the toi­let and was al­lowed to do so. Af­ter some time the teach­ers no­ticed the child miss­ing and be­gan search­ing for her.

She was found at the bot­tom of the pool in the deep end and was fished out and giv­en car­diopul­monary re­sus­ci­ta­tion (CPR) be­fore be­ing rushed to the Port-of-Spain Gen­er­al Hos­pi­tal where she died.In a brief in­ter­view with CNC3 yes­ter­day, a rel­a­tive of the child, Psy­che Bap­tiste, said doc­tors tried to every­thing they could for over 20 min­utes to re­vive her but were un­suc­cess­ful.

She said a teacher told her the chil­dren were out of the pool and Jemimah went to use the wash­room. She said no one was sure if the child en­tered the pool be­fore she went to the bath­room as she had defe­cat­ed in the pool.Bap­tiste added: "No­body thought to look in the pool and when they did look in the pool they found her at the bot­tom of the pool."She turned five on May 2. That could have been any­one's child, even mine. She was her moth­er's on­ly daugh­ter, right now her moth­er thinks she has noth­ing to live for."

She said the fam­i­ly had been of­fered coun­selling but she said they hoped there were closed cir­cuit cam­eras to cap­ture what hap­pened so the fam­i­ly could at least have clo­sure.She de­scribed the child in one word, "lov­ing", adding that the fam­i­ly's life would no longer be the same."We want an­swers. What hap­pened? Why was she left alone to go to the wash­room un­su­per­vised? No an­swer could suf­fice, at least we should get clo­sure," she said.In the sec­ond death, 23-month-old Kris­ton Obadele Gon­za­les died af­ter he wan­dered in­to a man-made pond in the fam­i­ly's yard on Sun­day. (See oth­er sto­ry)

Speak­ing at the Foren­sic Sci­ence Cen­tre, St James, yes­ter­day, rel­a­tives of the child, who wished not to be iden­ti­fied, told the me­dia the boy ran out the house when a door was left open and went in­to the pond.The rel­a­tives said around 1.45 pm no one had no­ticed the child had wan­dered out­side. They added that none of the chil­dren at the Alex­is Street, Ma­yaro, home was al­lowed in the pond."He was a very nice child, the most lov­ing thing you would ever meet, very in­tel­li­gent. His par­ents couldn't come to­day. They couldn't han­dle it. He was the first and on­ly boy with five sis­ters," the rel­a­tives added.