SHAR­LENE RAM­PER­SAD

The cousin of 17-year-old mur­der vic­tim Christo­pher Cum­mings is call­ing on so­cial work­ers to do more for young boys with­out fa­thers.

Speak­ing to Guardian Me­dia at the Foren­sic Sci­ences Cen­tre, St James, yes­ter­day, Pat­sy Nathan-Bans­field said the Gov­ern­ment and so­cial work­ers have to step up their game to in­ter­vene in cas­es where young boys are fa­ther­less.

Cum­mings’ body was found be­neath sev­er­al sheets of gal­vanise roof­ing in a clear­ing near his Achong Trace, Tu­na­puna home on Tues­day. He was last seen around 8.30 pm on March 5 and was re­port­ed miss­ing to po­lice on Mon­day night by his old­er broth­er. His body was found by CEPEP work­ers do­ing beau­ti­fi­ca­tion work in the area. He was shot sev­er­al times.

Yes­ter­day, Nathan-Bans­field made a plea to cit­i­zens to raise their chil­dren bet­ter.

“I am talk­ing to the peo­ple of T&T, we have to groom our chil­dren. I am ask­ing the so­cial work­ers, the Min­istry of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty, come and vis­it our com­mu­ni­ties, don’t stay in your air-con­di­tioned of­fice and just take notes and walk away, we need help,” Nathan-Bans­field said.

She said there have been so­cial work­ers who have tried to as­sist vul­ner­a­ble youths in the past but not enough is be­ing done.

Nathan-Bans­field not­ed that there was a pat­tern of crim­i­nal el­e­ments prey­ing on young boys from sin­gle-par­ent fam­i­lies. How­ev­er, she de­nied sug­ges­tions on so­cial me­dia that Cum­mings was in­volved in any crim­i­nal ac­tiv­i­ty.

“I know he was miss­ing his fa­ther but even though he was miss­ing his fa­ther, he didn’t go that road and it has a lot of peo­ple out there are see­ing these sin­gle moth­ers and these lone­ly chil­dren and tak­ing them and tak­ing ad­van­tage of them.”

She de­scribed Cum­mings as a lov­ing child who did not de­serve the grue­some end he came to.

“My cousin be­ing here this morn­ing, I hope it could change the youth life be­cause he didn’t de­serve it…we need to put the guns down and the church­es need to come out and help us,” she said.

Nathan-Bans­field said Cum­mings was his moth­er’s fourth child but the first for his fa­ther, who died two years ago.

“We used to give his fa­ther fa­tigue about when he giv­ing us a ba­by to play with and when Christo­pher was born, his fa­ther was so proud to have him and he groomed him to be a gen­tle­man.”