RAD­HI­CA DE SIL­VA

rad­hi­ca.sookraj@guardian.co.tt

A sol­dier who sur­ren­dered to po­lice in con­nec­tion with the dou­ble mur­ders of Abeo Cud­joe and her 12-year-old son Levi Lewis has been re­leased from po­lice cus­tody.

Po­lice sources said yes­ter­day that fol­low­ing in­struc­tions from the Di­rec­tor of Pub­lic pros­e­cu­tions, the 35-year-old sol­dier was re­leased around 3.15 pm pend­ing fur­ther in­ves­ti­ga­tions.

Cud­joe, 30, a pig farmer, was chopped mul­ti­ple times on her arms and chest while Levi was wound­ed in the neck be­fore 2 am last Tues­day. Cud­joe’s three-year-old ba­by was not in­jured and the front door was bro­ken, po­lice said. Levi walked a dis­tance away to a rel­a­tive’s home be­fore he col­lapsed and died.

Po­lice con­firmed Cud­joe made sev­er­al do­mes­tic vi­o­lence re­ports against a male rel­a­tive. Af­ter her hand was bro­ken in an al­leged do­mes­tic dis­pute, she ap­plied for a pro­tec­tion or­der on April 25, which was sub­se­quent­ly grant­ed by the court. That same day, she took to so­cial me­dia say­ing she had been abused for eight years.

Mean­while, hours be­fore the sol­dier was freed, a spe­cial mass was held in ho­n­our of Cud­joe, her son and oth­er mur­der vic­tims at the St Do­minic's RC Church in Pe­nal, where Fa­ther Robert Chris­to said the church is do­ing what it can to pro­vide psy­cho-so­cial as­sis­tance to peo­ple in the com­mu­ni­ty as it seeks to strength­en fam­i­lies.

Speak­ing to re­porters fol­low­ing the mass, Fa­ther Chris­to said al­though Cud­joe lived near­by, he nev­er knew she was a vic­tim of do­mes­tic vi­o­lence be­fore her mur­der.

“I don’t have a clue what hap­pened there, I just knew her as some­body jour­ney­ing with the church and I don’t know the par­tic­u­lar de­tails.”

He said there were fam­i­lies in the area who have been chal­lenged dur­ing the pan­dem­ic.

“We want to re­spond in pres­ence, in peer coun­selling, psy­choso­cial, psy­cho­log­i­cal maybe and/or course ma­te­r­i­al. We’re just try­ing to find the best, holis­tic ap­proach to en­ter in a non-judge­men­tal way. The first stage is re­al­ly a pres­ence,” he said.

He said the role of the church is be­yond the pew.

“We be­lieve that we have to move from the pew to the pave­ment. We have had mi­grants, kid­nap­ping and death. We had a mi­grant who died in the flood­wa­ters. This com­mu­ni­ty has a lot of pain and it’s just part of Chris­t­ian liv­ing that we have to re­spond with love and a holis­tic ap­proach, not on­ly with prayer,” Fa­ther Chris­to said.

He said the Church has al­so been do­ing a lot of grief man­age­ment.

“Peo­ple, es­pe­cial­ly dur­ing COVID, nev­er got an op­por­tu­ni­ty to get clo­sure. We’re do­ing that kind of min­istry, we do grief man­age­ment in terms of bring­ing the pic­ture, light­ing the can­dle, of­fer­ing the mass, giv­ing to the poor,” he added.

He said the team of peer coun­sel­lors has been speak­ing to peo­ple in the La­choos Road com­mu­ni­ty where Cud­joe and her son were killed, as well as at the St Do­minic’s RC School where he at­tend­ed.

Send­ing a mes­sage to the pop­u­la­tion, Fa­ther Chris­to called for a fo­cus on build­ing their fam­i­lies.

“I just want to tell peo­ple that it starts in the fam­i­ly. The fam­i­ly is the first church, the do­mes­tic church, a child learns what they see. If we get fam­i­ly life good, it will come to the church, it will come to the na­tion. I be­lieve the root is fam­i­ly life and to make our fam­i­lies holy, sur­ren­der­ing to the will of God,” he said.

He said peo­ple must al­so help one an­oth­er as they build their fam­i­lies and their com­mu­ni­ties.