Eliz­a­beth Gon­za­les

To­ba­go Cor­re­spon­dent

The rel­a­tives of 15-year-old Beris Joseph, whose body found dumped at Mt Hay on Sat­ur­day, are strug­gling to cope with the or­deal.

Joseph, a Fourth Form Sig­nal Hill Sec­ondary School stu­dent who lived at Gold­en Lane, was found in the Mt Hay area, be­tween Pa­tience Hill and Black Rock, on the road­way at 8 am. He seemed to have been shot sev­er­al times.

Speak­ing briefly to Guardian Me­dia yes­ter­day, Joseph’s aunt An­gela Tay­lor said the fam­i­ly is try­ing to take it easy, al­though they are dev­as­tat­ed by the sit­u­a­tion.

She then said she was hold­ing on and try­ing to take it light.

Asked about a gris­ly video cir­cu­lat­ing, show­ing Joseph be­ing tor­tured sup­pos­ed­ly mo­ments be­fore he was killed, Tay­lor said she had not seen it and was fo­cus­ing on hold­ing her­self to­geth­er. She was un­able to speak any fur­ther.

In the video, Joseph, who seemed to be un­con­scious, was be­ing car­ried on the shoul­der of one man while an­oth­er man played with his head as it dan­gled on the side. In the last 20 sec­onds of the video, what looked like chil­dren on bi­cy­cles were seen rid­ing around him, taunt­ing him as he looked on with his hands and feet bound. He was found dead in the same clothes he was seen wear­ing in the video.

Al­though res­i­dents be­lieve the killing was gang-re­lat­ed, in­ves­ti­ga­tors are still search­ing for a mo­tive.