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Saturday, July 26, 2025

Sean Luke’s mother: ‘I have to live until I die without my child’

by

Shastri Boodan
1463 days ago
20210723

Sean Luke’s moth­er Pauline Lum­fai wept open­ly yes­ter­day when Guardian Me­dia vis­it­ed her home at Hen­ry Street East, Or­ange Val­ley, short­ly af­ter a High Court Judge found two men guilty of mur­der­ing her six-year-old.

But Lum­fai said the on­ly way she could get jus­tice is if she gets her son back, some­thing that will nev­er hap­pen.

“I have to live with that for the rest of my life be­cause there is no true jus­tice for me. The jus­tice, what I want is that I want back my son. They could give me back my child? They can’t, so where my jus­tice is? That is it, I have no jus­tice,” she said.

Sean’s body was re­cov­ered from a cane­field close to his home in 2006. He died from in­ter­nal in­juries and bleed­ing af­ter be­ing sodomised with a sug­ar­cane stalk.

Akeel Mitchell, 28 and Richard Chaitoo, 31 —then 13 and 16 years old re­spec­tive­ly—were con­vict­ed of his mur­der.

Yes­ter­day, Lum­fai was a shell of her for­mer self. She sat on a plas­tic chair and wept.

She showed some of the mem­o­ra­bil­ia of Sean’s ac­tiv­i­ties, in­clud­ing his kinder­garten cer­tifi­cate, a moth­er’s day card and paint­ings that she kept in the child’s worn-out blue school bag.

His bed­room has since been con­vert­ed in­to a room for her grand­son. The moth­er said de­spite the ver­dict, she was not hap­py to see what be­came of the two young men.

“Af­ter every­thing, they are hu­man be­ings, that doesn’t make me hap­py at all, look what they did to they-self, look at what they did to their own self. They cause that on them,” she said.

“I can tell the two of them may God almighty have mer­cy on their soul, be­cause it ain’t fin­ish for them yet. It may seem like it fin­ish on the earth here but it still have the one up there (re­fer­ring to God) to face, be­cause He see every­thing they do to my son. All the an­gels see it, I hope they have re­morse in their souls. I hope they think back and feel sor­ry and have this re­morse for what they did to my child.”

Lum­fai al­so lament­ed the 15 years it took for the mat­ter to go to court and for the rul­ing.

“I glad it come to an end and no­body ain’t drag it on by ap­peal­ing, I glad it come to an end. I have to live un­til I die with­out my child.”

She ad­mit­ted that lis­ten­ing to the tri­al was dif­fi­cult.

“I could not lis­ten to the doc­tor and what the doc­tor found on him, I could not lis­ten to the de­tails of the mur­der­ers and them and what they did with my child, the State wit­ness ,what he said. I could not han­dle it and left and went out­side.”

She al­so made an­oth­er ad­mis­sion, that Sean’s mur­der has left her emo­tion­al­ly ru­ined.

“I be­came more qui­et, more re­served. We have a dairy farm, I does be in the farm. I try to keep my­self busy. When I go to bed at night, I does put my mouth in­to the pil­low and bawl and that is how I does do it, then I does have to pray, ‘Fa­ther take that feel­ing out of me’. That is what those mur­der­ers do to me for the rest of my life.”

Af­ter Luke was mur­dered, his moth­er said many promis­es were made, among them a promise to con­struct a safe play park for chil­dren in the area. It all nev­er ma­te­ri­alised.

Lum­fai said a for­mer San Fer­nan­do may­or as­sist­ed the com­mu­ni­ty in get­ting a space but noth­ing was done and the area was lat­er over­tak­en by squat­ters.

Mean­while, Damien Lum­fai, 42, Sean Luke’s old­er broth­er, said he too was strug­gling with emo­tions.

He said the hard­est thing to do af­ter Sean’s fu­ner­al was to pack away his clothes and toys.

He re­called tak­ing his younger broth­er for rides in his van when­ev­er he was not work­ing off­shore.

He lament­ed that the re­hash­ing of grue­some de­tails about Sean’s mur­der was hard for his moth­er to hear.

“No par­ent should have to go through that,” he said.

But Lum­fai said it re­mains a chal­lenge for her to let go of what Sean went through and his mur­der.

“Tell me how to do that, I have been liv­ing on this earth now not by my will, by most high God will. He is the one giv­ing me the will to go on, I have no pow­er and strength, it is the will of God,” she said.


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