There is not a day that goes by that In­di­ra Kan­hai and her fam­i­ly does not grieve for her 24-year-old son, Jeron Kan­hai, an in­tern doc­tor who fell off a build­ing at Hill­top Dri­ve in Champs Fleurs on May 3, last year.

Ever since his sud­den death, life has nev­er been the same. He fell from the fourth floor of a cor­ner apart­ment on the com­pound that day. The fam­i­ly is con­vinced that Jeron nev­er died by sui­cide.

"He was tak­en away from us, that is an in­jus­tice I would have to live with and go to my grave with. I would grieve un­til I die be­cause Jeron was an ex­cel­lent child every moth­er would love to have as their own," his moth­er, In­di­ra, said chok­ing back tears.

The Kan­hai fam­i­ly had nev­er spo­ken to the me­dia about their son's death un­til an ex­clu­sive in­ter­view on CNC3's Un­spun last week­end when they said there were still burn­ing ques­tions about his death that were unan­swered.

Both par­ents who are rev­erends spoke at their St Joseph Vil­lage home in San Fer­nan­do close to two weeks ago and re­called the hours be­fore Jeron's demise.

His moth­er said on the Sat­ur­day evening be­fore he died, Jeron left his home to meet friends at a gat­ed apart­ment in Champs Fleurs.

Jeron had re­quest­ed a phone card which his moth­er stopped and picked up at a drug store in Vista­bel­la on the way to a rel­a­tive’s home, as his at­tempts to top up his phone on­line ear­li­er had failed.

When the fam­i­ly re­turned home, his moth­er said that as a habit, she called him close to 9 pm to make sure he got to Champs Fleurs.

Dur­ing their phone con­ver­sa­tion that last­ed close to ten min­utes, his moth­er said they spoke about pur­chas­ing books that Jeron planned to or­der for his spe­cialised prac­tice. She said he sound­ed nor­mal and there was no in­di­ca­tion that any­thing was wrong.

"Af­ter talk­ing to him I said son, I will see you in the morn­ing, love you, good night. He said 'love you, and good night.' He is a boy that does not leave home with­out kiss­ing his moth­er and say­ing I love you and I would walk my son to the gate every time he is go­ing out, be it to work or what­ev­er he would kiss me at the gate and say 'mom­my, I love you.' "

It would be the last con­ver­sa­tion she would ever have with her son.

In the wee hours of Sun­day, May 4, In­di­ra said Jeron's girl­friend and her moth­er came to their home.

"Her moth­er told me some­thing hap­pened to Jeron and you need to get to Mount Hope now and I woke up my daugh­ter and left home to go to Mount Hope. It was not an easy dri­ve not know­ing what had hap­pened," ex­plained his moth­er.

Un­easy and con­fused, the Kan­hais ar­rived at Er­ic Williams Med­ical Sci­ences Com­plex where they spoke briefly with po­lice of­fi­cers and then doc­tors broke the trag­ic news to them.

The Kan­hai fam­i­ly was over­whelmed with grief as med­ical at­ten­dants un­zipped the body bag of their son.

"His face was in­tact. It was dif­fi­cult at that mo­ment to know that we left our son alive and to see him in a body bag at that time it was trag­ic, dif­fi­cult, it was very hard. We as pray­ing par­ents say Lord, if you can give him an op­por­tu­ni­ty or sec­ond chance un­der­stand, but it was re­al­ly dif­fi­cult," Jeron's fa­ther, Ronald, said as he rec­ol­lect­ed the or­deal.

"I think it is the most dif­fi­cult thing any par­ent could go through to see their child in a body bag–it is every par­ent's night­mare for some­one to un­zip a bag and show you your child, some­body that you love so much. He was my first child. We have had many ob­sta­cles with Jeron, when he was three weeks old he al­most died. We have fought so much for Jeron, when he was 14 years old he had a ma­jor in­jury, when he was 22 he had a back in­jury," his moth­er said break­ing down in tears while her hus­band squeezed her shoul­der re­as­sur­ing­ly.

What hap­pened on the night in ques­tion?

On the night in ques­tion, Jeron's par­ents said he was at the apart­ment in the pres­ence of friends who were al­so in­terns.

Jeron's fa­ther said when he ar­rived at the St Joseph Po­lice Sta­tion that morn­ing he was hop­ing Jeron's friends who were there dur­ing the in­ci­dent could have giv­en him a clear­er idea of what hap­pened.

"We were in the room there, it was a bit qui­et be­cause no­body was say­ing any­thing, and all I said is ac­ci­dents do hap­pen. I said ac­ci­dents do hap­pen and I am not go­ing to blame no­body. I am not go­ing to blame the friends, un­der­stand...and it does hap­pen, all I need to know is the truth," said his fa­ther.

Af­ter a bout of si­lence in the room, one of Jeron's friends told his par­ents what they had wit­nessed and what was re­port­ed in news­pa­per pub­li­ca­tions a few days lat­er.

"She said that they had drink al­co­hol and smoke mar­i­jua­na and Jeron be­came er­rat­ic and they had to put him in a room. When they put him in the room and af­ter a while, he opened the door and then opened the slid­ing door that leads out to the porch area and jumped off the back porch," said In­di­ra.

Frus­trat­ed with the sys­tem, trou­bling ques­tions

In the news­pa­per re­ports that fol­lowed, there were claims that Jeron had used the hal­lu­ci­na­to­ry drug LSD.

But to date, his par­ents said, there is no em­pir­i­cal proof of that.

To make mat­ters even worse, nei­ther the tox­i­col­o­gy re­port nor the re­sults from the al­co­hol tests are avail­able.

The po­lice’s abil­i­ty to move for­ward with the case hinges on the re­port.

"There was ab­solute­ly no men­tion of LSD, ab­solute­ly and em­phat­i­cal­ly no men­tion of LSD. How­ev­er, we saw that af­ter in a news­pa­per ar­ti­cle. Every time we would go to the po­lice they would say they are wait­ing on the tox­i­col­o­gy re­port and they can­not pro­ceed fur­ther un­til they get it, we were al­so told the ma­chine to do the al­co­hol con­sump­tion on the body has not been work­ing since 2019 and that is a dead-end there. There is a lot of un­cer­tain­ties we have to deal with," his moth­er said ex­press­ing frus­tra­tion at the sys­tem.

In fact, ac­cord­ing to a copy of the first post-mortem, which took the Kan­hai fam­i­ly al­most three months to se­cure, “a 24-year-old male with no known med­ical com­plaints or his­to­ry of drug abuse re­port­ed­ly con­sumed an un­known vol­ume of al­co­hol fol­lowed by smok­ing two cig­a­rettes (mixed with to­bac­co and mar­i­jua­na).” This re­port made no men­tion of LSD and more im­por­tant­ly, Jeron had no pri­or his­to­ry of drug use as stat­ed in this re­port.

His par­ents said they could not place Jeron and drugs in the same sen­tence. To them, it was com­plete­ly out of his char­ac­ter.

"In the sta­tion when they had said those al­le­ga­tions about our son in­volved in these things, we were blown out of our mind. We don’t know our son to be in­volved in such things, it caus­es us to re­alise some­thing is def­i­nite­ly wrong," his fa­ther said.

The fam­i­ly's de­ci­sion to delve deep­er in­to their son’s death left more trou­bling ques­tions.

"We were told that there is no way our son Jeron jump off the build­ing, there was no in­di­ca­tion of frontal in­juries, it was on­ly a frac­tured skull and spinal in­juries. A sec­ond au­top­sy was done which con­firmed the first au­top­sy, there was no frontal in­juries or fa­cial dam­age or bro­ken limbs con­sis­tent with a jump or fall from that height," his moth­er ex­plained.

What the first au­top­sy stat­ed was that Jeron suf­fered trau­ma to his skull–frac­tured ribs con­sis­tent with a fall from a height with a tox­i­col­o­gy re­port still pend­ing.

Pathol­o­gist has con­cerns

Not sat­is­fied ful­ly with the re­sults of the first au­top­sy, the fam­i­ly turned to pathol­o­gist Prof Hu­bert Dais­ley to con­duct a sec­ond au­top­sy. Prof Dais­ley spoke to Un­spun and gave his med­ical opin­ion about his find­ings.

He said he had some con­cerns with the find­ings of Jeron's sec­ond au­top­sy.

"What is re­mark­able about this au­top­sy was that I did not find in­jury to the limbs, nei­ther the up­per limbs nor the low­er limbs, there was no in­jury."

Prof Dais­ley added, " If some­body should jump in the ma­jor­i­ty of cas­es in the lit­er­a­ture you would have some in­jury to the limbs, some sort of in­jury. I am not say­ing that it would hap­pen in all cas­es, but in the ma­jor­i­ty of cas­es as stat­ed there would be in­juries to the limbs. In this par­tic­u­lar case, there were no in­juries to the limb."

The pathol­o­gist said he was hes­i­tant to in­di­cate whether Jeron jumped or if his fall may have been ac­ci­den­tal.

The first per­son to re­spond to the fall was a se­nior doc­tor, who did not wish to speak on or off the record to us when con­tact­ed, but in­di­cat­ed that Jeron's par­ents could ful­ly re­veal what was told to them about the in­ci­dent.

The moth­er said, "We were told that in no way our son jumped from that build­ing. The per­son who as­sist­ed him in­di­cat­ed that to us and I was told 'Mrs Kan­hai, your son did not jump.' "

The med­ical ex­pert told the par­ents they came to this con­clu­sion based on the po­si­tion of Jeron's body when they found him. "Jeron was found with his head to­wards the build­ing and his foot to­wards the dri­ve­way. If you jump, then you would jump off, your head will be off of the build­ing not fac­ing the build­ing. Your foot would be fac­ing the build­ing not your head and that is the po­si­tion he was found in and he was found on his back," said his moth­er.

The Kan­hais got se­cu­ri­ty guards on the com­pound to lie in the ex­act po­si­tion Jeron's body was found so they could take pic­tures to as­sist Prof Dais­ley dur­ing his au­top­sy.

Ques­tion marks

In­di­ra Kan­hai said she even con­front­ed the of­fi­cer in­ves­ti­gat­ing her son's death who al­so seemed to have some ques­tion marks over the ap­par­ent sui­cide.

"I am ask­ing the of­fi­cer, were you told that my son did not jump? He said 'yes, I was told.' I said what are you do­ing with that in­for­ma­tion, are you not in­ves­ti­gat­ing fur­ther? And he said we have to wait on the tox­i­col­o­gy re­port."

In­ves­ti­ga­tors said the case was on­go­ing and there was very lit­tle they could say as they await fur­ther in­for­ma­tion.

His par­ents are con­vinced that their son had too much to live for to take his own life.

"My son ac­tu­al­ly did not com­mit sui­cide be­cause there was not any­thing show­ing that he want­ed to com­mit sui­cide. If you want­ed to com­mit sui­cide you would not put in a $400 phone card that evening, you do not go to a friend’s apart­ment to com­mit sui­cide. You will not make me or­der such ex­pen­sive books to start study­ing to spe­cialise. Jeron had noth­ing to be both­ered about and was well tak­en care of," his moth­er said.

And while she holds out hope for an­swers, his bed­room re­mains like a shrine.

His watch­es and shoes are neat­ly lined off, his foot­ball T-shirts hang on the walls and pic­tures of him are dot­ted around the room. Their son who at­tend­ed AS­JA Boys' Col­lege was a na­tion­al schol­ar­ship win­ner in 2014. "They would tell us our son was schol­ar­ship ma­te­r­i­al since he was in Form Three and he wrote CXC and then did CAPE and ex­celled and won a na­tion­al schol­ar­ship," his moth­er said man­ag­ing a smile.

She said Jeron was al­so very ath­let­ic and played a va­ri­ety of sports in­clud­ing foot­ball.

Both par­ents said the most out­stand­ing qual­i­ty about Jeron they re­called was his "will­ing­ness to al­ways help peo­ple no mat­ter who they were."

All the Kan­hais want is clo­sure in their son's death and they are hope­ful for it soon.

With her eyes welling up with tears In­di­ra asked, "Can you imag­ine the hurt and pain I feel when I lie in my bed know­ing my son is nev­er com­ing back home?"