Po­lice from the North-Cen­tral Di­vi­sion are seek­ing help from the pub­lic to lo­cate a woman who was as­sault­ed in front of her young son.

Videos of the beat­ing, which were cir­cu­lat­ed on so­cial me­dia on Mon­day, showed the woman be­ing at­tacked by two women as she walked away hold­ing her son. The boy, who ap­peared to be no old­er than six years old, could be heard scream­ing as the woman begged her at­tack­ers not to beat her in front of her son. A cap­tion on the video claimed the in­ci­dent was record­ed in Mara­cas/St Joseph.

Po­lice said they did not have re­ports of such an as­sault in the past few days and called on the woman to come for­ward.

One of­fi­cer, who de­scribed the video as dis­turb­ing, said while of­fi­cers would be­gin in­quiries in­to the in­ci­dent to de­ter­mine if it did hap­pen in St Joseph, the pub­lic should come for­ward with in­for­ma­tion.

“This isn’t the kind of thing that we take light­ly. In the video you can see one of the women ac­tu­al­ly pulling the child away to hit the moth­er,” he said. “We need to be bet­ter than this and it shows the dis­re­gard that some peo­ple have for the lives and well-be­ing of oth­ers, even chil­dren.”

The of­fi­cer said the at­tack­ers could face se­ri­ous charges when found.

Con­tact­ed for com­ment, the head of the TTPS Child Pro­tec­tion Unit (CPU) Snr Supt Claire Guy-Al­leyne said the video was passed on to the Cy­ber and So­cial Me­dia Unit to gath­er more in­for­ma­tion on where the in­ci­dent might have tak­en place. She said it was cause for se­ri­ous con­cern as a child was as­sault­ed dur­ing the fra­cas.

“Thus far, we haven’t re­ceived any in­for­ma­tion on this in­ci­dent, so we need the pub­lic’s help with any in­for­ma­tion they may have. It’s very un­for­tu­nate to see these types of sit­u­a­tions, so we need to find these peo­ple as soon as pos­si­ble,” Guy-Al­leyne said.