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Saturday, March 15, 2025

Keyana found dead in barrel at home

by

20131128

The search for six-year-old Keyana Cum­ber­batch end­ed in de­spair around 3 pm yes­ter­day, when po­lice found the child dead in the place they least ex­pect­ed to find her. The child was found in her apart­ment at Build­ing 4, Mal­oney Gar­dens, D'Abadie, in a bar­rel, be­neath pieces of cloth­ing.The find came al­most a day to the week af­ter the body of one-year-old Ja­cob Munroe was found in a cesspit near his Mara­cas, St Joseph home. An au­top­sy re­vealed he was beat­en and smoth­ered to death.

And yes­ter­day, as stunned Mal­oney res­i­dents re­flect­ed on Munroe's killing, they once again won­dered how some­one could be so heart­less to mur­der an in­no­cent child.

Speak­ing with mem­bers of the me­dia short­ly af­ter the child's body was re­moved from the apart­ment at 7.28 pm, Asst Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice in charge of Homi­cide, Wayne Dick, said it was dif­fi­cult to con­clude that the child's body was moved to the apart­ment af­ter she was re­port­ed miss­ing on Mon­day. Dick said po­lice could not say, due to the state of de­com­po­si­tion of the body, whether there were marks of vi­o­lence on her.

It was re­port­ed that the child, a sec­ond-year pupil of the St Bar­bara's Shouter Bap­tist Pri­ma­ry School, ar­rived home on Mon­day, changed her clothes and was on her way to her grand­moth­er's house with her younger sis­ter, three-year-old Bri­ana Lewis. This was her dai­ly rou­tine. She stayed at their grand­moth­er's un­til their moth­er, Si­mone Williams, re­turned home from work every school day. Cum­ber­batch was last seen in com­pa­ny of a male rel­a­tive who is still in po­lice cus­tody as­sist­ing of­fi­cers with their in­ves­ti­ga­tions.

Dick said his men, called in from the three Homi­cide Di­vi­sions–Port-of-Spain, Arou­ca and San Fer­nan­do–would be work­ing as best as they could to en­sure they con­duct a thor­ough in­ves­ti­ga­tion so that when charges are laid they would be air­tight. He added that his men had two main fo­cus­es in mind, "there is a God and it is child's mur­der they are deal­ing with."

When the T&T Guardian ar­rived on the scene just af­ter 4 pm, res­i­dents were chat­ting among them­selves about the "wicked­ness" of "that man." Some sat in front their apart­ments look­ing on. Cars slowed down, dri­vers rolled their win­dows down to in­quire, and when in­formed shook their heads and drove off.While the adults mur­mured amongst them­selves about what they would have done had Keyana been their child, five school­girls were singing Bible songs they learnt from each oth­er. On­ly one said she knew Keyana.

With anger etched on their faces and vis­i­ble in their speech, res­i­dents wait­ed un­til the body was brought out. When it hap­pened, there was a loud wail of "Oh God!" fol­lowed by loud cry­ing. Res­i­dents, who were be­fore then silent on their bal­conies and stand­ing in the road­way out­side the home, showed their anger."Women have to know who they putting them­selves with," one woman shout­ed.An­oth­er woman screamed, "Bring him, he have to suf­fer!"

"That is wicked­ness! Je­sus! Why peo­ple so wicked? Look the bar­rel the child was in," shout­ed an­oth­er as the cloth­ing that cov­ered the child's body, the bar­rel she was placed in and her body were placed in wait­ing ve­hi­cles.Keyana's fa­ther, Kevon Cum­ber­batch, who spoke to the me­dia ear­li­er, said the sus­pect who in cus­tody must be brought to jus­tice, adding the key to his cell should al­so be thrown away."Who fill­ing that space now?" he asked be­fore leav­ing.

Di­anne Vin­cent, a self-pro­fessed adopt­ed grand­moth­er of Keyana, said the child was al­ways around her and would spend time with her sis­ter, Vin­cent's grand­daugh­ter."Right now I have no words, all I want is jus­tice. Look where they found the child," Vin­cent said.Dick told the me­dia that the po­lice would main­tain a pres­ence in the com­mu­ni­ty dur­ing the night.

Last Thurs­day, the body of Munroe, who was re­port­ed kid­napped two days ear­li­er, was found wrapped in a pur­ple sheet in a cesspit close to where he was al­leged­ly snatched by three men.It was re­port­ed to the po­lice that around 12.30 pm last Tues­day, a close male rel­a­tive of Ja­cob's was at his San­ta Ri­ta Trace, Mara­cas, St Joseph home when three armed men en­tered and de­mand­ed that the man hand over a gun he was hid­ing for some­one.

Af­ter he said he had no idea what the men were talk­ing about, the men are al­leged to have or­dered the rel­a­tive to slit his own wrist and drink a flam­ma­ble sub­stance. The men then grabbed the child and fled the home. On Wednes­day he was laid to rest.


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