Kevon Felmine

Se­nior Re­porter

kevon.felmine@guardian.co.tt

With po­lice un­able to gath­er enough ev­i­dence to bring charges in the al­leged bul­ly­ing-re­lat­ed death of St Stephen’s Col­lege stu­dent Jay­den Lalchan, his fam­i­ly is now grap­pling with an in­ten­si­fied sense of grief.

Fif­teen-year-old Jay­den, a Form Four stu­dent, took his life at his Princes Town home on Oc­to­ber 3, days af­ter re­port­ed­ly be­ing bul­lied and threat­ened by sev­er­al of his school­mates. An in­ves­ti­ga­tion by Princes Town po­lice, which in­clud­ed in­ter­views with par­ents, school staff, and an al­leged sus­pect, failed to pro­duce re­sults that could bring the fam­i­ly clo­sure.

Jay­den’s par­ents, Fa­ree­da and Ro­han Lalchan were not home when Guardian Me­dia vis­it­ed yes­ter­day. His aunt, Rad­hai­ka Ramjohn, shared that the fam­i­ly still strug­gles to cope. Ramjohn ex­plained that the Lalchans were dev­as­tat­ed by the re­cent news and were in a frag­ile state. She not­ed that the fam­i­ly learned about the out­come of the in­ves­ti­ga­tion from the me­dia, rather than from the po­lice.

Ramjohn has not yet dis­cussed the in­ves­ti­ga­tion’s re­sults with Jay­den’s par­ents due to their cur­rent emo­tion­al state, but said rel­a­tives were do­ing their best to com­fort them.

“It is very painful. It is dev­as­tat­ing, and it is hard to ac­cept this out­come with­out feel­ing that we have achieved jus­tice,” Ramjohn said.

She said that the fam­i­ly was sim­ply fo­cused on sup­port­ing Jay­den’s par­ents, de­scrib­ing it as “tor­ture” for them to be with­out their son. She not­ed that they may nev­er re­cov­er, as Jay­den was their world. The fam­i­ly home, she said, now felt like a mu­se­um ded­i­cat­ed to him, with his pho­tos, clothes, and oth­er be­long­ings pre­served around the house.

“These par­ents built their en­tire lives around their one son. It is heart­break­ing for us to wake up each morn­ing and not see him there. Every sin­gle day, they strug­gle just to get through. It is not easy.”

Fol­low­ing Jay­den’s death, Min­is­ter of Ed­u­ca­tion Dr Nyan Gads­by-Dol­ly stat­ed that an in­ves­ti­ga­tion by the Min­istry of Ed­u­ca­tion found no ev­i­dence that Jay­den had en­dured years of bul­ly­ing. She not­ed that there were no pri­or or sub­se­quent re­ports of bul­ly­ing filed with the school or the min­istry.

Ac­cord­ing to Gads­by-Dol­ly, the first in­di­ca­tion of any dif­fi­cul­ty Jay­den was ex­pe­ri­enc­ing at school came through a let­ter he wrote to a teacher on Sep­tem­ber 17. On Sep­tem­ber 26, a stu­dent re­port­ed­ly pulled off Jay­den’s mask, prompt­ing Jay­den to re­tal­i­ate by punch­ing the stu­dent. A teacher quick­ly in­ter­vened to end the al­ter­ca­tion. St Stephen’s Col­lege al­so is­sued a state­ment deny­ing any re­ports of bul­ly­ing, stat­ing it had not re­ceived any com­plaints of such in­ci­dents.