KEVON FELMINE

Se­nior Re­porter

kevon.felmine@guardian.co.tt

It was a par­ent’s worst night­mare for Jay­loy Clarke-Toney and her hus­band, Arnold Clarke, as they wit­nessed their 12-year-old son Tariq bleed out as he await­ed help af­ter falling on­to a knife.

Tariq, who lived with his par­ents and sib­lings at 6th Com­pa­ny, In­di­an Walk, died at the Princes Town Dis­trict Health Fa­cil­i­ty (PT­D­HF) at 7.50 pm Mon­day.

In­ves­ti­ga­tors be­lieve he ac­ci­den­tal­ly fell on­to a knife he used to cut co­conut at the back of his home that evening and sev­ered a vein. A med­ical re­port showed Tariq suf­fered a three-cen­time­tre-long punc­ture wound, ap­prox­i­mate­ly eight cen­time­tres deep on the right side of the neck.

Med­ical staff be­lieve he fell on­to the knife based on the tra­jec­to­ry of the in­jury and oth­er fac­tors. How­ev­er, in­ves­ti­ga­tors said they would need the re­sults of an au­top­sy card­ed for lat­er this week to con­firm the sus­pi­cion. Po­lice said Tariq was home with his par­ents pick­ing and cut­ting co­conuts from a tree at the back of the house. He opened and car­ried a co­conut for his moth­er, Jay­loy Toney-Clarke, and re­turned to the back­yard.

Toney-Clarke and her hus­band, Arnold, were in their bed­room around 5.30 pm when she went to the win­dow and called Tariq to come in­side and bathe. She looked away, and a minute lat­er, Tariq came in­to her bed­room hold­ing a bleed­ing wound on his neck, say­ing, “Look what hap­pened, Mom. Look what hap­pened.”

Ac­cord­ing to po­lice, Toney-Clarke called for an am­bu­lance, but af­ter wait­ing some time, she con­tact­ed her broth­er at 6.30 pm, who came from Man­a­ham­bre Road. He and his rel­a­tives put Tariq in a van and took him to the health fa­cil­i­ty. When they ar­rived at 7.08 pm, Tariq was un­re­spon­sive, and de­spite ef­forts to treat the wound, he lat­er died.

Cpl Clarence and PC Thomas of the Princes Town CID re­spond­ed to Tariq’s death and took state­ments and a med­ical re­port from staff at the health fa­cil­i­ty. Un­der­tak­ers took the boy’s body to the San Fer­nan­do Gen­er­al Hos­pi­tal mor­tu­ary.

Crime Scene In­ves­ti­ga­tors vis­it­ed Tariq’s home to process and pho­to­graph the scene and took cus­tody of a wood­en-han­dled knife. Neigh­bours and rel­a­tives gath­ered around the fam­i­ly home yes­ter­day to of­fer sup­port. A trau­ma­tised Clarke-Toney had to pause sev­er­al times while Princes Town Crim­i­nal In­ves­ti­ga­tions De­part­ment de­tec­tives in­ter­viewed her. The fam­i­ly de­clined an in­ter­view with jour­nal­ists, say­ing their grief was too much.