Sascha Wil­son

Se­nior Re­porter

sascha.wil­son@guardian.co.tt

Still strug­gling to cope with the loss of his three-year-old son, the fa­ther of Omarie Richins is ap­peal­ing to the pub­lic to re­frain from mak­ing what he de­scribed as un­just and hurt­ful com­ments sur­round­ing the child’s death.

In a tele­phone in­ter­view yes­ter­day, An­der­son Richins, 58, re­ject­ed al­le­ga­tions that he and Omarie’s moth­er were neg­li­gent par­ents.

“We are not neg­li­gent par­ents,” he said. “Peo­ple do not know us and are say­ing all kinds of things. That is not fair or right.”

Re­fer­ring to a re­cent in­ci­dent in which a woman died by sui­cide af­ter her 10-month-old grand­daugh­ter drowned in a swim­ming pool, Richins said Omarie’s moth­er would have giv­en her life for her chil­dren.

“That woman would give her life for her chil­dren, same as their fa­ther,” he said. “When peo­ple go about tar­nish­ing her name like that, it is hurt­ful. They can­not mis­judge peo­ple in that way.”

Richins said the fam­i­ly is strug­gling to cope with the loss.

“I nev­er want­ed to bury any of my chil­dren,” he said. “It is hard. We spend day and night cry­ing. No­body knows the pain. As a fa­ther, it is a painful thing—strug­gling to try to save your child and, in the end, you fail. It is not easy.”

Omarie com­plained of stom­ach and headache pains af­ter eat­ing sev­er­al slices of piz­za at his Ste Madeleine home some­time af­ter 8.30 pm on Jan­u­ary 11. His par­ents ini­tial­ly be­lieved he may have eat­en too much.

Al­though Omarie’s par­ents live in the same house, they sleep in sep­a­rate rooms.

The child again com­plained of feel­ing un­well around 2.30 am on Jan­u­ary 12, and his moth­er at­tend­ed to him.

How­ev­er, just be­fore 5 am, she found him un­re­spon­sive and soaked in vom­it on the bed.

She alert­ed Richins, who be­gan per­form­ing CPR. When para­medics ar­rived, Omarie was tak­en to the San Fer­nan­do Gen­er­al Hos­pi­tal, where at­tempts to re­sus­ci­tate him were un­suc­cess­ful.

An au­top­sy con­duct­ed at the San Fer­nan­do mor­tu­ary list­ed the cause of death as cere­bral oede­ma, as­pi­ra­tion pneu­moni­tis and a res­pi­ra­to­ry tract in­fec­tion. Po­lice are al­so await­ing the re­sults of a tox­i­col­o­gy re­port amid con­cerns the child may have in­gest­ed drain wa­ter pos­si­bly con­t­a­m­i­nat­ed with her­bi­cide or pes­ti­cide, as well as urine, on Jan­u­ary 11.

Omarie’s par­ents were still fi­nal­is­ing fu­ner­al arrange­ments yes­ter­day.