RAD­HI­CA DE SIL­VA

Se­nior Mul­ti­me­dia Re­porter

rad­hi­ca.sookraj@guardian.co.tt

As the search for the body of two-year-old An­ge­lo To­bias-Plaza con­tin­ues, a hand­ful of ac­tivists gath­ered at Har­ris Prom­e­nade, San Fer­nan­do, on Sun­day evening for a can­dle­light vig­il seek­ing clo­sure in the case that has gripped the coun­try.

The vig­il came as the child’s moth­er, who was re­leased from po­lice cus­tody, has not re­turned to the fam­i­ly home.

The gath­er­ing was or­gan­ised by Kevin Lalchan, who stressed that the event was not a protest but a spir­i­tu­al ap­peal for in­ter­ven­tion as the child’s body re­mains miss­ing.

“As you all would know, ba­by An­ge­lo’s body has not been found as yet,” Lalchan said.

“While we have a con­fes­sion from his step­fa­ther, we have not found ba­by An­ge­lo’s body as yet.”

The vig­il came days af­ter To­bias-Plaza’s step­fa­ther, Shan­non Miller, 24, of Good­wood, To­ba­go, was charged with the child’s mur­der fol­low­ing le­gal ad­vice from the Of­fice of the Di­rec­tor of Pub­lic Pros­e­cu­tions.

The child was ini­tial­ly re­port­ed miss­ing on May 11, trig­ger­ing a large-scale land and sea search op­er­a­tion in­volv­ing po­lice, emer­gency re­spon­ders and vol­un­teer groups.

Lalchan said the pur­pose of the event was to seek di­vine guid­ance and com­fort for a na­tion await­ing an­swers.

“My in­ten­tion here, as I stand here with my fel­low beloved com­rades, is that this is a prayer and can­dle­light vig­il for ba­by An­ge­lo,” he said.

He said those gath­ered want­ed An­ge­lo’s body to be found so that the child could re­ceive fi­nal rites.

“We want clo­sure. We want jus­tice. We want ba­by An­ge­lo’s body to be found so that he may get his fi­nal rites as well,” he said.

Lalchan said his par­tic­i­pa­tion stemmed from per­son­al con­vic­tion as both a par­ent and cit­i­zen.

“I’m just hu­man. I have a heart. I’m a par­ent. I’m a fa­ther. I’m a cit­i­zen of Trinidad and To­ba­go,” he said.

“It grieves me to know we as a na­tion can­not pro­tect our women and our chil­dren, our el­der­ly folks.”

Dur­ing his ad­dress, Lalchan ques­tioned the lev­el of pub­lic re­sponse to cas­es in­volv­ing vi­o­lence against chil­dren.

“For these non­sen­si­cal is­sues, there is a na­tion­al out­rage,” he said.

“But when it comes to in­no­cent lives, where is the na­tion­al out­rage? Where is the na­tion­al in­ter­est con­cern­ing our ba­bies?”

He al­so called for com­mu­ni­ties to take a greater role in child wel­fare. He said cit­i­zens should re­turn to the idea that com­mu­ni­ties col­lec­tive­ly raise chil­dren.

“We have to come back to a place where it re­al­ly does take a vil­lage to raise a child,” he said.

Lalchan ad­di­tion­al­ly called for stronger pro­tec­tive mea­sures for chil­dren and ques­tioned the ef­fec­tive­ness of ex­ist­ing sup­port sys­tems.

Among those at­tend­ing was Em­press Kew, rep­re­sent­ing the Rasta­fari com­mu­ni­ty, who said in­ci­dents in­volv­ing chil­dren had be­come an on­go­ing con­cern.

“Our chil­dren are miss­ing. This is not a one-off in­ci­dent,” she said.

“If you read the pa­pers ... we have chil­dren miss­ing every day. Teenagers, ba­bies.”

Kew said fam­i­lies of­ten lacked sup­port struc­tures and com­mu­ni­ty net­works.

“There is a moth­er who picks up a man who is not the fa­ther of the child, and vi­o­lence hap­pened in the home, and there was no­body to wit­ness it or even know re­al­ly what is go­ing on,” she said.

She said cit­i­zens had a re­spon­si­bil­i­ty to speak out.

“Who else will stand up for jus­tice?” she asked.

Kew al­so said they stood in sol­i­dar­i­ty with pro­test­ers who gath­ered in Port-of-Spain on Sun­day in sup­port of Ka­ia Sealy, who was shot by po­lice on Jan­u­ary 20 dur­ing an in­ci­dent in which her part­ner, Joshua Sama­roo, was killed. Sealy has since been charged with three counts of shoot­ing with in­tent to cause griev­ous bod­i­ly harm and manslaugh­ter aris­ing out of the in­ci­dent.