Shane Su­perville

Se­nior Re­porter

shane.su­perville@guardian.co.tt

A 33-year-old Ari­ma man was in­ter­viewed by po­lice as he re­mained in cus­tody up to Wednes­day af­ter­noon, as en­quiries con­tin­ue in­to the mur­der of three-year-old Jereem George.

Lit­tle Jereem was asleep at his moth­er's Chris­t­ian Av­enue Ex­ten­sion, Windy Hill, Arou­ca, home last Thurs­day night when the man re­port­ed­ly set fire to the home, killing him.

The man spent four days on the run, be­fore even­tu­al­ly sur­ren­der­ing to po­lice in Ari­ma on Tues­day morn­ing.

In­ves­ti­ga­tors de­scribed the ev­i­dence against the sus­pect as be­ing "over­whelm­ing," as charges were ex­pect­ed to be laid with­in a mat­ter of days.

Sources con­firmed the man was pre­vi­ous­ly charged for the pos­ses­sion of mar­i­jua­na and the pos­ses­sion of co­caine for the pur­pose of traf­fick­ing.

Speak­ing with Guardian Me­dia on Wednes­day af­ter­noon, Jereem's grand­moth­er An­tonette George said the fam­i­ly was grad­u­al­ly com­ing to terms with the tod­dler's death as his moth­er, Geneiel George was mak­ing the fi­nal arrange­ments for his fu­ner­al this Mon­day.

She ad­mits how­ev­er that she her­self was over­come with emo­tions un­ex­pect­ed­ly on Wednes­day.

"Every­one is com­ing along well emo­tion­al­ly. It wasn't as bad to­day for them, but I guess to­day was my day be­cause I just broke down and cried a lot.

"I couldn't help her (Jereem's moth­er) with the dif­fer­ent er­rands and arrange­ments to­day, be­cause I couldn't deal with that, so she went and dealt with it alone."

Re­gion II Homi­cide in­ves­ti­ga­tors are con­tin­u­ing en­qu­uries.