Sharlene Rampersad
Melinda Jaggernauth yesterday slammed a group of ‘protesters’ who used the murder of her two-year-old daughter Aniah McLeod to “peddle their conspiracy theories.”
In an interview with Guardian Media hours after the protest, Jaggernauth said she did not attend the event as her family was advised not to after persons realised it was not what it was originally advertised to be.
However, when she was told of the claims during the event of the leader of the five-person group, self-styled Commander-in-Chief of the Trinidad and Tobago United Power Jahpaul Cooper, Jaggernauth became angry.
During the small protest, Cooper called for justice for McLeod’s murder but interspersed his narrative with several conspiracy theories about several topics, including the Government, COVID-19 pandemic and even the Saharan dust.
“When they talk about COVID and the Government this and that, then they are just using my child as an excuse to play they protesting,” Jaggernauth said.
“I don’t think if they are protesting about the child and the death and they protesting about that, that doesn’t have anything to do with coronavirus or the pandemic or anything, so I don’t see why he would do that.”
During yesterday’s proptest, although Cooper could not say what type of justice he was seeking for little McLeod, he said he would continue his demonstrations for the rest of the week.
There seemed to be one genuinely distressed protestor in the group yesterday though.
When she was allowed to speak after Cooper, grandmother Laura Ortiz wept, saying McLeod’s murder had deeply affected her.
“They can’t do a little child that, it wrong to do that and we want justice. We are fighting for this little child here, we want justice,” Ortiz said.