Homi­cide de­tec­tives up to late yes­ter­day were prob­ing the death of a six-year-old Laven­tille boy whom they strong­ly sus­pect was beat­en to death by a close male rel­a­tive. The boy was iden­ti­fied as Josi­ah Gov­er­nor, of Her­man Scott Trace, St Paul Street, East Dry Riv­er, Port-of-Spain. In­ves­ti­ga­tors be­lieve the boy was re­peat­ed­ly beat­en with a wood­en whip pri­or to his death. Po­lice first learned of the boy's death at about 3 pm yes­ter­day af­ter of­fi­cers held the rel­a­tive walk­ing with the boy's life­less body in his arms, me­tres away from the Besson Street Po­lice Sta­tion. In­ves­ti­ga­tors said they were in­formed by the man the boy fell through a win­dow in his home and he was on the way to the Port-of-Spain Gen­er­al to seek med­ical at­ten­tion.How­ev­er, se­nior po­lice of­fi­cers said of­fi­cers be­came sus­pi­cious when they no­ticed marks of vi­o­lence on the boy's body.

Po­lice de­tained him and rushed Gov­er­nor to the hos­pi­tal where he was pro­nounced dead on ar­rival. Po­lice sources said Gov­er­nor's body looked quite small for a boy of his age and be­lieved he looked mal-nour­ished. Up to late yes­ter­day, the man and a fe­male rel­a­tive were be­ing ques­tion at the po­lice sta­tion by Cpl Charles and of­fi­cers of the Re­gion One Homi­cide Bu­reau of In­ves­ti­ga­tions. The fe­male rel­a­tive is not a sus­pect, po­lice said When the T&T Guardian vis­it­ed Gov­er­nor's hum­ble home, res­i­dents ex­pressed shock over the boy's death. Al­most all the res­i­dents re­vealed the boy and his fe­male rel­a­tive were phys­i­cal­ly abused by the male rel­a­tive on many oc­ca­sions in the past.

When in­ter­viewed by the T&T Guardian, neigh­bours claimed to have wit­nessed the boy "fly­ing" through the win­dow of the home be­fore land­ing on the rocky ground al­most 12 feet be­low.

"The man was beat­ing the child and then throw him out the win­dow. I can't be­lieve he do that," sev­er­al neigh­bours claimed. "That boy use to get plen­ty licks from that man. He use to get beat for sim­ple things like home­work and play­ing too much," one fe­male neigh­bour, who wished to re­main uniden­ti­fied, said. Oth­er neigh­bours al­so claimed Gov­er­nor suf­fered months of abuse at the hands of the rel­a­tive. "That man (the male rel­a­tive) not wel­comed up here again. You can't kill lit­tle chil­dren and women. That not right," sev­er­al res­i­dents shout­ed. Gov­er­nor's body was tak­en to the Foren­sic Sci­ence Cen­tre, St James, where a post-mortem is ex­pect­ed to be con­duct­ed on Mon­day. De­tec­tives said they would wait un­til the re­sults of the au­top­sy un­til they of­fi­cial­ly de­ter­mines whether Gov­er­nor's death was a mur­der. How­ev­er they not­ed that his rel­a­tive would be kept in po­lice cus­tody un­til the re­sults of the au­top­sy were re­leased.