Derek Achong

Va­len­cia res­i­dents are call­ing for the par­ents of the two tod­dlers who died in a fire at their home yes­ter­day af­ter­noon to be charged with neg­li­gence.

Speak­ing with re­porters a cou­ple hours af­ter four-year-old Mawa­ki Gor­don and his two-year-old sis­ter, Mir­a­cle, per­ished in the fire at their home at Tat­too Trace, Va­len­cia, next door neigh­bour Ju­dith Daniel and Lo­cal Gov­ern­ment coun­cil­lor, Si­mone Gill, were high­ly crit­i­cal of their par­ents, who were not at home at the time of the blaze.

Stand­ing next to the smoul­der­ing ru­ins of the fam­i­ly's small wood­en home, Daniel al­leged that the tod­dlers, the last of the cou­ple's five chil­dren, were reg­u­lar­ly left un­at­tend­ed.

"Hon­est to God, I don't want to lie, they ac­cus­tom leav­ing chil­dren to see 'bout chil­dren. Would you do that?" Daniel asked.

"This was clear neg­li­gence on the par­ents. There must be jus­tice for the two chil­dren," she added.

Oth­er res­i­dents, who were in­ter­viewed by the T&T Guardian but who asked to re­main anony­mous, ex­pressed sim­i­lar views.

Ac­cord­ing to re­ports, around 12.40 pm, the Fire Ser­vices re­ceived a re­port of the fire from res­i­dents who no­ticed smoke com­ing from the house.

When po­lice and fire of­fi­cers ar­rived on the scene, the house was al­ready com­plete­ly en­gulfed in fire. The fire was quick­ly ex­tin­guished but fire of­fi­cers lat­er found the chil­dren's re­mains, which were re­moved and tak­en to the Foren­sic Sci­ence Cen­tre, St James, for au­top­sies.

The par­ents, a part-time taxi dri­ver and a hair­dress­er, were de­tained by po­lice when they ar­rived on the scene af­ter re­ceiv­ing news of the fire. They re­mained in po­lice cus­tody up to late yes­ter­day.

The cou­ple's oth­er chil­dren, who were at school at the time of the fire, were col­lect­ed by po­lice and were put in the care of of­fi­cials of the Chil­dren's Au­thor­i­ty.

In­ter­viewed as she vis­it­ed the scene yes­ter­day, Gill de­scribed the in­ci­dent as a great tragedy.

"We've had fire vic­tims in Va­len­cia be­fore but noth­ing like this. This is the worst thing I have seen. It's dif­fer­ent when it's chil­dren and the par­ents not home," she said.

Gill ques­tioned why the par­ents did not seek so­cial wel­fare as­sis­tance and did not place Mawa­ki in a kinder­garten.

"They were sup­posed to be in day care and an ear­ly child­hood cen­tre. We have two in Va­len­cia. There is no rea­son for this," she said. As she plead­ed with work­ing par­ents to be more re­spon­si­ble for their chil­dren, Gill said: "Put your chil­dren first. En­sure that your needs are not put in front of theirs. Seek out rep­re­sen­ta­tives, your coun­cil­lor, your MP, so­cial ser­vices. You must try," she said.

WPC Joseph of the Va­len­cia Po­lice Sta­tion is con­tin­u­ing in­ves­ti­ga­tions.