Sascha Wil­son

Se­nior Re­porter

sascha.wil­son@guardian.co.tt

Richard Re­nalis has been de­nied bail af­ter ap­pear­ing in court charged with the mur­der of 12-year-old Erin school­girl Mer­cedez Layne.

The 26-year-old Pa­lo Seco man ap­peared be­fore Mas­ter Kaleisha Am­brose-Per­sads­ingh in a vir­tu­al hear­ing at South Court A.

Dur­ing the hear­ing, the Mas­ter read a sched­ul­ing or­der di­rect­ing the pros­e­cu­tion to sub­mit the case file to the Of­fice of the Di­rec­tor of Pub­lic Pros­e­cu­tions and in­struct­ed that a State Coun­sel be as­signed by Sep­tem­ber 8. A suf­fi­cien­cy hear­ing has been set for Feb­ru­ary 4 next year.

The ac­cused was rep­re­sent­ed by at­tor­ney Cavell Sylvester, while Con­sta­ble Kevin Fe­lix ap­peared for the pros­e­cu­tion. Woman Cor­po­ral Dy­er-Bap­tiste of the Re­gion Three Homi­cide Bu­reau of In­ves­ti­ga­tions laid the charge.

On Wednes­day, homi­cide in­ves­ti­ga­tors re­ceived in­struc­tions from Spe­cial Ad­vis­er to the Di­rec­tor of Pub­lic Pros­e­cu­tions Joan Hon­ore-Paul to charge the sus­pect with the child’s mur­der.

The ac­cused was ar­rest­ed hours af­ter Mer­cedez’s body was dis­cov­ered in Erin last Sun­day.

Mer­cedez, a Stan­dard Four pupil of St Fran­cis Erin RC School, was re­port­ed miss­ing around 4 pm on Sat­ur­day af­ter she failed to re­turn home.

Ini­tial re­ports stat­ed that around 11.30 a.m. that day, the child had been placed in a PH ve­hi­cle to get to her home at Los Iros Beach Road, less than five min­utes away.

Search­es for the child end­ed around 7 am on Sun­day when an oil com­pa­ny work­er found her body in bush­es along a dirt track off Cara­pal Road.

An au­top­sy lat­er de­ter­mined that the child died as a re­sult of mul­ti­ple blunt-force in­juries.

The in­ves­ti­ga­tion was su­per­vised by Su­per­in­ten­dent Per­sad and As­sis­tant Su­per­in­ten­dent Maraj of the Re­gion Three Homi­cide Bu­reau of In­ves­ti­ga­tions.