Camille Clarke

The fam­i­ly of lit­tle Sephra Sankar was still try­ing to come to terms with her death yes­ter­day, hours af­ter she drowned in the fam­i­ly's pool.

Un­de­tect­ed by her moth­er, Sephra, a year-and-four-month-old tod­dler, al­so known as "Scoochie," ven­tured in­to the yard and fell in­to the pool on Mon­day evening and drowned. She was tak­en to the Ch­agua­nas Health Fa­cil­i­ty but was pro­nounced dead on ar­rival.

Po­lice said be­tween 1.45 pm and 2 pm, Sephra went miss­ing from in­side her Las Lo­mas home and when her moth­er, Free­da Cruick­shank, went look­ing she found her float­ing in the pool.

Act­ing Cpl Gopaul, PC Phillips and a par­ty of of­fi­cers vis­it­ed the scene and the child's body was tak­en to the San Fer­nan­do Mor­tu­ary for an au­top­sy.

Yes­ter­day when T&T Guardian vis­it­ed the fam­i­ly's home at Solomon Dri­ve, for­eign­ers who spoke Span­ish were bathing in the pool.

Rel­a­tives and oth­er mem­bers of the fam­i­ly had tents set up for the wake and were pow­er wash­ing the yard in prepa­ra­tion for vis­i­tors.

In a brief in­ter­view, the child's fa­ther, Ricky Sankar, a busi­ness­man, said he nev­er let Sephra go out­side by her­self. Sankar said he re­ceived a call that af­ter­noon from the ba­by's moth­er that she had gone miss­ing.

"I went to pick up my oth­er son from school and she called me and told me that she was not see­ing the child and the doors were locked. I told her to go out­side and check," he said.

Sankar said he was not at home at the time and when he called Cruick­shank back she did not re­turn his calls.

"When I came home I saw the child on the ground and the neigh­bour telling her how to per­form CPR (car­diopul­monary re­sus­ci­ta­tion)," he said.

He said the pool, which is called El Grande, was used for en­ter­tain­ment pur­pos­es in the past and rent­ed out for small par­ties.

"We nev­er used to take her out­side alone. Al­ways when we were there we used to take her out­side. We have life­guards here when we have par­ties. The court wants it like that," he said.

He said ba­by Sephra had on­ly just start­ed walk­ing and say­ing one or two words.

"She loved her fa­ther and she was a very lov­ing ba­by and al­ways want­ed me to lift her up and go with me every­where I go," he said.

Sankar said up to late yes­ter­day, he did not have any con­ver­sa­tions with his com­mon-law wife con­cern­ing the tod­dler's death.

"I don't know how to start that," he said. He said the fu­ner­al would be to­mor­row.

When Cruick­shank re­turned from the au­top­sy she did not want to com­ment on Sephra's death.

In­ves­ti­ga­tions are on­go­ing.