Sean Luke’s mother Pauline Lumfai wept openly yesterday when Guardian Media visited her home at Henry Street East, Orange Valley, shortly after a High Court Judge found two men guilty of murdering her six-year-old.
But Lumfai said the only way she could get justice is if she gets her son back, something that will never happen.
“I have to live with that for the rest of my life because there is no true justice for me. The justice, what I want is that I want back my son. They could give me back my child? They can’t, so where my justice is? That is it, I have no justice,” she said.
Sean’s body was recovered from a canefield close to his home in 2006. He died from internal injuries and bleeding after being sodomised with a sugarcane stalk.
Akeel Mitchell, 28 and Richard Chaitoo, 31 —then 13 and 16 years old respectively—were convicted of his murder.
Yesterday, Lumfai was a shell of her former self. She sat on a plastic chair and wept.
She showed some of the memorabilia of Sean’s activities, including his kindergarten certificate, a mother’s day card and paintings that she kept in the child’s worn-out blue school bag.
His bedroom has since been converted into a room for her grandson. The mother said despite the verdict, she was not happy to see what became of the two young men.
“After everything, they are human beings, that doesn’t make me happy at all, look what they did to they-self, look at what they did to their own self. They cause that on them,” she said.
“I can tell the two of them may God almighty have mercy on their soul, because it ain’t finish for them yet. It may seem like it finish on the earth here but it still have the one up there (referring to God) to face, because He see everything they do to my son. All the angels see it, I hope they have remorse in their souls. I hope they think back and feel sorry and have this remorse for what they did to my child.”
Lumfai also lamented the 15 years it took for the matter to go to court and for the ruling.
“I glad it come to an end and nobody ain’t drag it on by appealing, I glad it come to an end. I have to live until I die without my child.”
She admitted that listening to the trial was difficult.
“I could not listen to the doctor and what the doctor found on him, I could not listen to the details of the murderers and them and what they did with my child, the State witness ,what he said. I could not handle it and left and went outside.”
She also made another admission, that Sean’s murder has left her emotionally ruined.
“I became more quiet, more reserved. We have a dairy farm, I does be in the farm. I try to keep myself busy. When I go to bed at night, I does put my mouth into the pillow and bawl and that is how I does do it, then I does have to pray, ‘Father take that feeling out of me’. That is what those murderers do to me for the rest of my life.”
After Luke was murdered, his mother said many promises were made, among them a promise to construct a safe play park for children in the area. It all never materialised.
Lumfai said a former San Fernando mayor assisted the community in getting a space but nothing was done and the area was later overtaken by squatters.
Meanwhile, Damien Lumfai, 42, Sean Luke’s older brother, said he too was struggling with emotions.
He said the hardest thing to do after Sean’s funeral was to pack away his clothes and toys.
He recalled taking his younger brother for rides in his van whenever he was not working offshore.
He lamented that the rehashing of gruesome details about Sean’s murder was hard for his mother to hear.
“No parent should have to go through that,” he said.
But Lumfai said it remains a challenge for her to let go of what Sean went through and his murder.
“Tell me how to do that, I have been living on this earth now not by my will, by most high God will. He is the one giving me the will to go on, I have no power and strength, it is the will of God,” she said.
