Shane Su­perville

Se­nior Re­porter

shane.su­perville@guardian.co.tt

Homi­cide in­ves­ti­ga­tors say they are look­ing in­to an in­ter­view done by Je­re­mi­ah Mathu­ra, the old­er broth­er of Han­nah Mathu­ra, in which he said he tried warn­ing a close rel­a­tive about his sis­ter’s health in the weeks be­fore her death.

Han­nah Mathu­ra, 18, is be­lieved to have died some­time in Ju­ly 2017, and buried in the back­yard of her fam­i­ly’s home at Bu­tu Trace, Val­sayn. Her re­mains were dis­cov­ered in March af­ter one of her sib­lings made a re­port to the po­lice.

In the on-cam­era in­ter­view on Mon­day with Ian Al­leyne, host of an on­line crime pro­gramme, Je­re­mi­ah Mathu­ra said Han­nah had de­vel­oped oede­ma, a con­di­tion where flu­ids be­come trapped in the body’s tis­sues, and was in de­clin­ing health.

He added that he tried bring­ing this to the at­ten­tion of a close male rel­a­tive.

“There were some things I saw up close and in per­son and I warned him and told him he need­ed to take af­fir­ma­tive ac­tion and I be­lieve he was say­ing he took some sort of ac­tion, but I know he didn’t take ac­tion based on the guide­lines,” he said.

Mathu­ra said this led to fur­ther ten­sion with the rel­a­tive who told him to move out.

He de­scribed Han­nah as be­ing “out of it” the day be­fore she died.

He claimed that the sib­lings al­so begged for Han­nah to be tak­en for med­ical at­ten­tion. “We have made ap­peals and con­tin­ued to make ap­peals un­til her body was found,” he said.

Mathu­ra said Han­nah’s body re­mained in the house for as much as eight hours af­ter her death and was wrapped in a white sheet. He said he no­ticed his rel­a­tive’s car leav­ing the prop­er­ty.

“They nev­er re­al­ly spoke di­rect­ly to me. A lot of our as­so­ciates, be it in the schools, would know be­cause my broth­er and pos­si­bly oth­er sib­lings would have told peo­ple we had a dead sib­ling.”

He said an­oth­er sib­ling found out that Han­nah’s body had been buried be­hind the house but was un­able to say how he found out.

Mathu­ra said he moved out of the fam­i­ly’s home and be­gan liv­ing on his own in 2020.

He said while Han­nah suf­fered from cer­tain health is­sues, she was able to walk, and talk and was con­scious of her en­vi­ron­ment.

He claimed that he con­tact­ed the Chil­dren’s Au­thor­i­ty on two oc­ca­sions in 2013 and 2014 with lit­tle re­dress.

“I ex­pect­ed them to come up in the house and meet with the per­son be­cause they got Han­nah’s name. What I re­alised is be­cause I was a child or what­ev­er, they did not take it se­ri­ous­ly,” he said.

“And that is why the min­is­ter was able to com­ment on cer­tain things and say there was no record be­cause they did not take any ver­bal records in­to ac­count.”

Mathu­ra said there were in­stances where so­cial work­ers vis­it­ed the house but were re­buffed.

Con­tact­ed for com­ment, an of­fi­cer in the Homi­cide Bu­reau of In­ves­ti­ga­tions said the in­ter­view is be­ing viewed by po­lice to de­ter­mine whether any pre­vi­ous­ly un­known in­for­ma­tion was di­vulged. The of­fi­cer said in­ves­ti­ga­tors are work­ing with dif­fer­ent pieces of in­for­ma­tion al­ready shared by Han­nah’s sib­lings.

Of­fi­cers from the Child Pro­tec­tion Unit of the TTPS main­tained that they were not in­formed of any re­ports made about the Mathu­ra house­hold.

There was no re­sponse to an email sent to the Chil­dren’s Au­thor­i­ty up to late yes­ter­day. In March, short­ly af­ter Han­nah’s re­mains were found, the CEO of the Chil­dren’s Au­thor­i­ty Shel­don Cyrus ex­pressed con­cern about the cri­sis in the pro­tec­tion of the coun­try’s chil­dren.