An­na-Lisa Paul

Se­nior Re­porter

an­na-lisa.paul@guardian.co.tt

“If on­ly all par­ents prac­tised this type of re­spon­si­bil­i­ty when they see their chil­dren with things that they know they have not bought for them or they can­not get on their own, we can bring T&T back one per­son at a time.”

This was the sen­ti­ment ex­pressed by a se­nior po­lice of­fi­cer yes­ter­day, af­ter the moth­er of a teenage boy hand­ed him over to the po­lice when he was found with cloth­ing and oth­er items that were not his.

The woman, who lives at Mal­oney Gar­dens, con­tact­ed po­lice around 11.25 pm on Wednes­day and in­formed them that her 16-year-old son had re­turned home with items she did not pur­chase for him.

She al­so told law­men that the items might be con­nect­ed to a house-break­ing in­ci­dent ear­li­er that night in D’Abadie.

Around 4.30 pm on Wednes­day, a 51-year-old woman from Mal­oney Gar­dens, D’Abadie, re­port­ed to po­lice that some­one had bro­ken in­to her home and tak­en sev­er­al items be­long­ing to her 18-year-old son.

These in­clud­ed a pair of army green car­go pants, a pair of black and white Adi­das slip­pers, a buck­et hat, and sev­er­al oth­er per­son­al items.

Al­though of­fi­cers of the North­ern Di­vi­sion’s CSI vis­it­ed the home and processed the scene, no work­able prints were found.

Around 11.25 that night, the moth­er of the teenage boy con­tact­ed of­fi­cers at the Mal­oney Po­lice Sta­tion and in­formed them her son had been found with items she had not pur­chased for him.

The woman fur­ther claimed that a friend told her that her son had been in­volved in a pos­si­ble house­break­ing in the Mal­oney Po­lice Sta­tion Dis­trict.

Act­ing on this in­for­ma­tion, of­fi­cers went to the woman’s home and ar­rest­ed the teenag­er fol­low­ing a con­ver­sa­tion with her.

The woman whose home had been bur­glarised was lat­er brought to the po­lice sta­tion along with her son and iden­ti­fied the items tak­en from their home.

The se­nior po­lice of­fi­cial urged oth­er par­ents who know or were aware that their chil­dren are in­volved in crim­i­nal ac­tiv­i­ties to act re­spon­si­bly and hold them to ac­count for their ac­tions.

The­of­fi­cer said ac­count­able be­hav­iour could on­ly fos­ter and grow bet­ter cit­i­zens.