LEFT: Cherish Lezama.
RIGHT: Kimberly Thomas, left, mother of five-year-old Cherish Lezama speaks with her sister, Shernelle outside the Forensic Science Centre yesterday. PHOTO: JENNIFER WATSON

At five years old, she had many dreams, one of them was to join the army and serve her country. This aspiration came to an abrupt end after Cherish Lezama fell 100 feet down a precipice to her death, mere metres from her L’Anse Noire village, Toco, home on Thursday evening.

She went to a neighbour’s home to play with another child when the incident occurred. The exact moments leading up to the incident remained unclear, yesterday. Lezama, a first year student of the L’Anse Noire Moravian Primary School, was pronounced dead on arrival at the Toco Health Centre shortly after 7 pm. She was found minutes earlier by her father Herbert, who formed part a search group. The girl’s body was found on a rock along the shoreline. At the Forensic Science Centre, the child’s mother Kimberly Thomas was unable to contain herself after positively identifying her daughter’s body. “Oh gosh boy, Cherish gone...she gone and leave me, my only child gone. How I go sleep without her? I don’t know what I would do without Cherish boy I go miss she,” Kimberly screamed, as other relatives attempted to console her.

She remembered her last moments with Cherish. “Yesterday (Thursday) she packed her bag and placed her name on it. She was ready for school, now all of that gone away,” she said as she placed a rag over her face and cried. Cherish’s aunt Shernelle Thomas said shortly before 6 pm, the victim went to her neighbour’s home to play with her best friend as she usually did. She said Kimberly got worried when the place started to get dark and Cherish did not return home. “When she could not be found a search was mounted for her. We went by the boy next door but he said he did not know where she was. Sometime later her father found her on a rock,” Thomas, an employee of the Trinidad Publishing Company, said. Cherish’s uncle ASP Don Lezama, who is assigned to the Port-of-Spain Division and based at the Woodbrook Police Station said there was no way Cherish could have survived the fall.

“No matter what, she would not have made it. According to the post-mortem results she sustained massive injuries which included a broken leg, punctured lungs, broken ribs, and a severed spinal chord,” Lezama said during an interview at the Forensic Sciences Centre, yesterday. The girl is expected to be buried in Toco on Monday after a funeral service at the Mission RC Church at 2 pm.