Renu­ka Singh

The fa­ther of ba­by Ja­cob Munroe will be charged with his mur­der.

Di­rec­tor of Pub­lic Pros­e­cu­tions Roger Gas­pard to­day in­struct­ed the po­lice to charge 26-year-old Al­lan Thomas with his son's mur­der.

Thomas will al­so be charged with at­tempt­ed sui­cide.

Gas­pard, ac­cord­ing to re­ports, re­ceived and re­viewed the in­ves­ti­ga­tors' file this morn­ing and made the de­ci­sion just af­ter 2.30 pm this af­ter­noon.

Thomas was hos­pi­talised since No­vem­ber 19, when he re­port­ed to po­lice that ab­duc­tors had en­tered his home, made him drink a flam­ma­ble liq­uid and then made him slit his own wrists be­fore they snatched the ba­by.

Ac­cord­ing to po­lice re­ports, on that Tues­day af­ter­noon he con­tact­ed St Joseph Po­lice say­ing the child was kid­napped from the fam­i­ly's home at San­tari­ta Trace, Llu­en­go Vil­lage, Mara­cas, St Joseph.

The rel­a­tive claimed three men en­tered the house, as­sault­ed him and de­mand­ed he hand over a gun he was hid­ing for some­one. The men then al­leged­ly grabbed the child and fled the house.

Around 1.30 pm on Wednes­day, po­lice searched the fam­i­ly's prop­er­ty where they found the child's body, which was wrapped in cloth, in a cesspit.

By Thurs­day an au­top­sy found that the ba­by had been smoth­ered and al­so re­vealed bruised to his but­tocks in­di­cat­ing that he was beat­en be­fore be­ing killed.

Thomas's hos­pi­tal­i­sa­tion had de­layed in­ves­ti­ga­tions as he was un­able to be ques­tioned prop­er­ly.

This was the first of two mur­der cas­es in­volv­ing young chil­dren that have sparked out­rage. Days af­ter ba­by Ja­cob's body was found, the re­mains of miss­ing six-year old Keyana Cum­ber­batch were dis­cov­ered in a bar­rel in her moth­er's apart­ment. She had been re­port­ed miss­ing two days be­fore the dis­cov­ery. A post mortem showed she had been beat­en to death and sex­u­al­ly as­sault­ed while un­con­scious.

The DPP's of­fice has not yet been con­sult­ed with re­gard to that in­ves­ti­ga­tion.