Rhon­dor Dowlat

Se­nior Re­porter

rhon­dor.dowlat@guardian.co.tt

small com­mu­ni­ty in Care­nage last night staged a wake for sev­en-week-old ba­by Tahir Alex­is, who died hours ear­li­er af­ter be­ing tak­en un­re­spon­sive to the St James Med­ical Com­plex.

Guardian Me­dia un­der­stands that Homi­cide in­ves­ti­ga­tors were called in to in­ves­ti­gate the cir­cum­stances sur­round­ing the death.

Ba­by Alex­is lived with his par­ents, his moth­er, 20, and fa­ther, 19, at West­ern Main Road, Big Yard, Care­nage. His grand­moth­er, Ki­ba, al­so lived there to help in tak­ing care of him.

Ac­cord­ing to a po­lice re­port, at about 10.15 am, of­fi­cers were called to the St James Med­ical Com­plex by a med­ical doc­tor, who re­port­ed that ba­by Alex­is was brought in not breath­ing and that he was med­ical­ly ex­am­ined and it was ob­served that his limbs were stiff, and his hands, feet and lips were blue, with dry blood around the nose and the mouth. There was al­so a mot­tled ap­pear­ance to the skin, which was patchy. Med­ical doc­tors al­so got no pulse or heart­beat from ba­by Tahir.

Po­lice said the doc­tor con­firmed CPR was per­formed and sub­se­quent­ly ter­mi­nat­ed af­ter 20 min­utes.

The doc­tor al­so re­port­ed the ba­by’s ap­pear­ance was un­usu­al and the find­ings were in­con­sis­tent with the re­port re­ceived from the moth­er, whose cloth­ing had blood on it.

The moth­er al­leged­ly told po­lice she was un­aware of the time when she woke up and fed her child be­fore plac­ing him in his playpen in her room on his back to sleep. She then al­leged­ly went back to sleep.

The moth­er claimed that at about 8 am, she awoke and saw her ba­by was un­re­spon­sive. She and the child’s fa­ther took the ba­by to the St James Med­ical Com­plex in the com­pa­ny of a neigh­bour, where the ba­by was med­ical­ly ex­am­ined and pro­nounced dead around 8.40 am.

The Homi­cide Bu­reau was con­tact­ed and A/Cpl Per­ri­era and PC Khan, WPC Clarke and WPC Do­na­tien, and the CSI of Homi­cide Bu­reau Re­gion I, re­port­ed to the hos­pi­tal and sub­se­quent­ly start­ed an in­ves­ti­ga­tion.

Guardian Me­dia vis­it­ed ba­by Alex­is’ rel­a­tives last night and was told by his ma­ter­nal grand­moth­er that his par­ents were very dis­traught.

“The things that are com­ing over so­cial me­dia is mak­ing things worse for the fam­i­ly. The par­ents are in and out with mixed emo­tions and every­thing is af­fect­ing them right now,” she said.

The pa­ter­nal grand­moth­er, Ki­ba, said af­ter Moth­er’s Day, she took it up­on her­self to move in to help her son and his wife take care of her first grand­child.

“Every morn­ing I used to take him for walks to see the ocean. That’s my first grand­child and I loved him all.”

Asked what hap­pened, Ki­ba, who agreed with the child’s ma­ter­nal grand­moth­er, said they will wait on the au­top­sy be­fore com­ment­ing.

Ki­ba said, “It is noth­ing about him be­ing beat­en and I don’t know where and why that would come out but the child just wasn’t breath­ing.”

Last night, the street at L’anse Mi­tan was lined with flam­beaux sig­nalling the start of the wake for the child and scores of peo­ple from the com­mu­ni­ty were seen pass­ing in at the res­i­dence to ex­tend their con­do­lences to the fam­i­ly.