An­na-Lisa Paul

Se­nior Re­porter

an­na-lisa.paul@guardian.co.tt

Rel­a­tives of a woman who re­port­ed­ly kid­napped an 11-month-old ba­by boy and took him to To­ba­go, where she hand­ed him over to her ex-boyfriend, ex­pressed shock as they at­tempt­ed to process the bizarre act.

A fe­male rel­a­tive said the 28-year-old sus­pect, who works as a hair­dress­er, had men­tal is­sues. Say­ing the ac­tion by the sus­pect, who lives at East­ern Quar­ry, Laven­tille, had ad­verse­ly af­fect­ed the fam­i­ly, who were mourn­ing the death of a rel­a­tive, the woman said, “My head so hot right now ... I can’t even process this.”

The sus­pect, who is un­mar­ried and has no chil­dren, was de­scribed as some­one who loves chil­dren and fre­quent­ly in­ter­act­ed with the neigh­bour­hood young­sters.

Of­fi­cers at the Besson Street Po­lice Sta­tion were no­ti­fied around 7 am on Thurs­day that the ba­by was miss­ing.

The ba­by’s 21-year-old moth­er, who lives a short dis­tance away from where the sus­pect was stay­ing, told of­fi­cers she last breast­fed the ba­by at 1 am and re­tired to bed with the child next to her. How­ev­er, up­on wak­ing at 5.45 am to breast­feed the child again, she no­ticed he was not next to her.

Of­fi­cers said the woman re­port­ed search­ing for the ba­by in the house and when this was un­suc­cess­ful, she raised an alarm in the neigh­bour­hood. Un­able to lo­cate him, the moth­er went to the po­lice sta­tion, fol­low­ing which of­fi­cers vis­it­ed the house with a K9 unit and be­gan search­ing.

Dur­ing this time, of­fi­cers re­ceived in­for­ma­tion and went to the Port of Port-of-Spain, where they con­firmed the sus­pect was seen board­ing the 6 am fer­ry sail­ing to To­ba­go with the child.

Alert­ing of­fi­cials in To­ba­go, of­fi­cers were able to de­ter­mine that the sus­pect hand­ed over the child, along with a bag of ba­by clothes, to a man in Scar­bor­ough, fol­low­ing which she went to the air­port and board­ed a flight back to Trinidad. She was de­tained by po­lice at home around 7.30 pm on Thurs­day, whilst in the com­pa­ny of rel­a­tives.

In­ves­ti­ga­tors learnt the sus­pect and the man were in­volved in a re­la­tion­ship for sev­er­al months, and the woman end­ed the re­la­tion­ship af­ter he took up a job in To­ba­go. Po­lice were told by the man that the sus­pect said she had be­come preg­nant and had kept promis­ing to bring “his son” to vis­it him in To­ba­go. The man, who has ad­dress­es at Phase Five, Beetham Gar­dens, and Sig­nal Hill, To­ba­go, did not re­sist when he was con­front­ed by of­fi­cers and will­ing­ly hand­ed over the child, who was said to be in good health. Al­though he was not ar­rest­ed, he was said to be as­sist­ing of­fi­cers with the in­ves­ti­ga­tion up to yes­ter­day.

Up­set vil­lagers yes­ter­day said this was the first time the woman had tak­en such a dras­tic step, not­ing she had a love for ba­bies and chil­dren.

A rel­a­tive of the sus­pect said she nev­er met the moth­er of ba­by be­fore this in­ci­dent. She said, “I and all try­ing to wrap my head around what hap­pened. I didn’t even know the sus­pect (name called) did that ... I don’t know where to start.”

Claim­ing this was strange, the fam­i­ly won­dered if the sus­pect was work­ing with any­one, as they did not be­lieve she act­ed on her own.

The fam­i­ly said the sus­pect wit­nessed some­one be­ing shot in East­ern Quar­ry just over two years ago, and “since then, she does trip when she feel like ... but she nev­er do any­thing like this. Every­body shocked.”

Guardian Me­dia was told the ba­by was brought back to Trinidad by po­lice and re­unit­ed with the moth­er on Thurs­day. A med­ical up­date in­di­cat­ed he was in good spir­its and healthy.

Nei­ther the moth­er nor the child was at home when Guardian Me­dia vis­it­ed the house yes­ter­day.