Rishard Khan

An in­ves­ti­ga­tion is un­der­way in­to claims that au­thor­i­ties failed to act on re­ports that a rel­a­tive of sev­en-year-old McKen­zie Rechi­er threat­ened to kill her.

Ac­cord­ing to act­ing Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice Mc­Don­ald Ja­cobs, the Spe­cial Vic­tim’s Unit is look­ing in­to the claim by Michelle Alexan­der, a neigh­bour, who said the sus­pect con­fessed her in­ten­tions to her three weeks pri­or to do­ing it.

“I can­not an­swer at this time to say in those cir­cum­stances, whether or not a re­port was made, yes or no, but I know that Ms Guy-Al­leyne, the su­per­in­ten­dent, the head of that unit, is do­ing the rel­e­vant in­ves­ti­ga­tion and we will re­spond soon con­cern­ing that re­port,” Ja­cobs told re­porters yes­ter­day.

“A re­port was made to the Chil­dren’s Au­thor­i­ty, so we need to find out the truth be­hind it to see what re­al­ly went wrong so it will not be re­peat­ed.”

He said he ex­pects the re­port to be com­plet­ed by to­day.

On Fri­day night, a 25-year-old sus­pect al­leged­ly stran­gled and killed Rechi­er at her home. Short­ly af­ter mid­night Sat­ur­day, San­ta Flo­ra po­lice re­spond­ed to a re­port of an in­ci­dent in­volv­ing a child at Num­ber 7 Road, Pa­lo Seco. There, they met the sus­pect and oth­ers. In­side a dirty room, they found McKen­zie ly­ing in a foetal po­si­tion with a red­dish mark on her neck and her face swollen.

Alexan­der told the Sun­day Guardian that up­on hear­ing the sus­pect’s in­ten­tions, she quick­ly sought the as­sis­tance of po­lice and oth­er pub­lic of­fi­cials to help the sus­pect, who bat­tled men­tal prob­lems. How­ev­er, she said that help nev­er came.

Yes­ter­day, Ja­cob said the TTPS has the nec­es­sary el­e­ments to pro­vide sup­port to those who may be con­tem­plat­ing per­pe­trat­ing such acts as Rechi­er’s killer.

“We are here to pro­vide that sup­port to our com­mu­ni­ties. We are here to pro­vide that ser­vice and that is the rea­son why we es­tab­lished the Spe­cial Vic­tims Unit. We al­so have so­cial work­ers with­in the po­lice ser­vice and vic­tim sup­port of­fi­cers who work with­in that unit in or­der to pro­vide that nec­es­sary sup­port. So once some­one calls, we will pro­vide the sup­port,” he said.