The Death of Toddlers Adds To Trinidad and Tobago Traumas
On April 9, two-year-old Kymani Francis wandered away from his home in Point Fortin, a town in south Trinidad. Last seen by a neighbour at around 10:20 that morning as he made his way towards a nearby bridge, the child's body was eventually retrieved from a river in the area on the morning of May 10, after an extensive search operation.
The child's mother, 22-year-old Kimberly Charles, told police she last saw her son inside their house at approximately 10 a.m. Half an hour later, an emergency response patrol officer informed her that her son was spotted on the road.
Shortly before Francis’ body was found, Point Fortin mayor Saleema Thomas asked for prayers for the family via her Facebook page:
There were fears that the child would have made for the river, and concerns that the tide would have been high at the time he disappeared. Social media users were distraught — and some even suspicious — over the child's disappearance, with many wondering why the neighbour who spotted the child didn't simply run after him instead of calling the police.
The neighbour, Zoizoi Lewis, was interviewed via social media (7:53 on the timeline). By her account, she tried to reach the child, but he was so far ahead that he eluded her. While some social media users accepted her explanation, others called several aspects of her testimony into question, allegedly to the point where she and her family began to receive death threats. Upon learning of this, the Facebook page Newsauce commented, “The lynch mob posse needs to calm down.”
Still, the circumstances surrounding the child's disappearance remained murky for many, with some citing “child endangerment.”
Others called for a return to a deeper sense of community, where citizens look out for one another
Comedian Simmy De Trini, meanwhile, called for compassion towards the child's mother and shared her own experience with losing her own son for a few hours when he was three
Still, some felt that the ultimate responsibility for any child's well being lay with the parents
In the larger context of the violence the country has been experiencing, however — including an increase in school violence, the release of a task force report chronicling widespread abuse in state-run/funded children's homes as well as the failure of agencies charged with protecting children to act on the information, and a rise in homicides and femicides, not to mention recent cases of children drowning — the mood in the local blogosphere was tense.
People lined the road as the child's body was taken away, while commentators on both mainstream and social media questioned how a two-year-old could walk the mile to the river where he was found.
The level of national distress has been palpable, with Prime Minister Keith Rowley taking to social media on the evening of May 10 to articulate “the deep disturbing sorrow” that many were feeling
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