The Greek word Theo­ria lit­er­al­ly means “to see” or “to be­hold”, and it deals with the prac­tice of con­tem­pla­tion or ob­ser­va­tion, orig­i­nal­ly in Greek phi­los­o­phy, aimed at un­der­stand­ing truth, re­al­i­ty, or the di­vine.

What is the wis­dom in be­hold­ing the beau­ty of a child’s life? Per­haps the beau­ty in every child is in their in­no­cence; they have of­fend­ed no one and have no list of wrongs stand­ing against them. If there is any good­ness to be found in hu­man­i­ty, it is to be found in a child.

Per­haps their beau­ty is in their bound­less po­ten­tial. Every child has in­fi­nite pos­si­ble paths to walk, and their de­ci­sions can cre­ate an in­fi­nite num­ber of pos­si­ble fu­tures. Their to­mor­rows are end­less even as our days be­come num­bered.

Maybe it is their free­dom that we en­vy as well. A child knows noth­ing of the evils of the world; they don’t wor­ry about to­mor­row. A child has no rea­son to re­gret a sin­gle mis­take or bad de­ci­sion, and per­haps we are en­vi­ous of how free they are.

As I re­flect up­on the hor­rif­ic death of two-year-old An­ge­lo, I have to say that it is dif­fi­cult as a writer to do jus­tice to the death of a child. How can black ink on a newsprint con­vey the light­ness of his spir­it? How can my words trav­el the in­fi­nite paths he could have walked? How can lan­guage quell the pain that his mur­der has caused?

I can on­ly write about what An­ge­lo’s death is not; I can­not write about what it is be­cause that risks do­ing his death in­jus­tice.

His death is not fair, it is not right, it is not time­ly, and it is not healthy for a so­ci­ety that has a long his­to­ry of hor­rif­ic child killings.

With the self-con­fessed killer of the two-year-old child An­ge­lo To­bias Plaza in cus­tody, I won­der if the na­tion will ever heal from yet an­oth­er hor­rif­ic child mur­der. From the mur­der of six-year-old Sean Luke and 11-year-old Akiel Cham­bers, the na­tion’s col­lec­tive mem­o­ry has been marred by hor­rif­ic child mur­ders. The fail­ure to put the body of An­ge­lo To­bias Plaza to rest means the fam­i­ly and the wider com­mu­ni­ty would not have the cathar­tic re­lease of a fu­ner­al ser­vice where An­ge­lo’s body would re­ceive the re­spect it de­serves through cer­e­mo­ny.

Worse yet, if the body were found, it would have been rav­aged by the el­e­ments; the re­mains pre­sent­ed to his fam­i­ly, es­pe­cial­ly his moth­er, would bear no re­sem­blance to the child that once was.

Com­pound­ing the trau­ma, An­ge­lo’s moth­er, Kali­fah To­bias, has to live with the fur­ther trau­ma that a man close to her is the con­fessed killer of her beloved child. I would in­fer that a man ca­pa­ble of mur­der would al­so have abused Kali­fah To­bias phys­i­cal­ly or emo­tion­al­ly. Kali­fah may be re­count­ing each in­ci­dent of abuse in her mind as she re­flects on the in­cred­i­ble trau­ma that she suf­fered at the hands of this killer.

In a na­tion that of­ten fails women who are the sur­vivors of do­mes­tic vi­o­lence, it is im­per­a­tive that suf­fi­cient sup­port be giv­en not on­ly to the fam­i­ly of An­ge­lo Plaza, but the wider com­mu­ni­ty around him.

The say­ing “it takes a vil­lage to raise a child” cuts both ways in this in­stance; the vil­lagers now must mourn and be giv­en help to process what has tran­spired.

Even worse, the cul­ture of Trinidad and To­ba­go has a pen­chant for gos­sip. I urge cit­i­zens not to keep spread­ing spec­u­la­tive nar­ra­tives about the mo­tives be­hind the mur­der, as they may even­tu­al­ly be re­peat­ed to the fam­i­ly and com­mu­ni­ty that knew An­ge­lo and do psy­chic harm.

Gos­sip is rarely root­ed in fact, and of­ten the great­est gos­sips en­joy adding their own spin to a nar­ra­tive to em­bell­ish it and take it far­ther away from the truth. What our so­ci­ety needs now is not gos­sip but facts.

Re­search should be done on this case, es­pe­cial­ly up­on the psy­chol­o­gy of the killer. What sort of cold­ness and de­prav­i­ty makes a per­son ca­pa­ble of stran­gling a child and throw­ing them in­to the sea? There def­i­nite­ly is not enough psy­cho­log­i­cal and crim­i­no­log­i­cal re­search in­to homi­cides to help pol­i­cy­mak­ers make in­formed de­ci­sions.

Jour­nal­ists al­so have a role to play once the case is de­cid­ed and pre-tri­al pub­lic­i­ty isn’t an is­sue. In­ter­view­ing per­sons who knew the killer might paint a pic­ture to help un­der­stand a method to help so­ci­ety breed few­er in­di­vid­u­als who are ca­pa­ble of mur­der­ing a two-year-old child.

In the midst of this col­lec­tive trau­ma, we need to con­tem­plate and un­der­stand the facts so that we can move be­yond shock to a place of co­gent and well-rea­soned dis­course. The hor­ror of a stran­gled tod­dler be­ing thrown in­to the sea jus­ti­fies no end of con­dem­na­tion, but talk alone will not heal our so­ci­ety or pre­vent the next mur­der.

In the end, we need wis­dom to grasp this sit­u­a­tion so that we have a chance of tak­ing the lessons from An­ge­lo’s mur­der to pre­vent an­oth­er child be­ing killed.