Shane Su­perville

Se­nior Re­porter

shane.su­perville@guardian.co.tt

Amidst the grief of los­ing one of their youngest mem­bers, an Arou­ca fam­i­ly is pray­ing for jus­tice af­ter a tod­dler was burnt to death dur­ing an ar­son at­tack at their home.

Po­lice said Ge­niel George was at her Chris­t­ian Av­enue Ex­ten­sion, Windy Hill, Arou­ca home with her chil­dren, in­clud­ing her three-year-old son Jereem George, at 11.45 pm when a for­mer ac­quain­tance tried to break open a win­dow at the side of the house to gain en­try.

George tried to stop the man from en­ter­ing the premis­es but he over­pow­ered her and climbed through the win­dow.

George ran to get help from her broth­er, who lives near­by, but on re­turn­ing, re­alised her house was on fire.

In the pan­ic, she pulled out three of her chil­dren but for­got Jereem in­side.

George, along with her 14-year-old son, tried to res­cue Jereem from the blaze but could not get past the flames.

When Guardian Me­dia vis­it­ed the home yes­ter­day morn­ing, rel­a­tives and neigh­bours were seen con­sol­ing and phys­i­cal­ly sup­port­ing George, who was dis­traught fol­low­ing the tod­dler’s death.

Re­call­ing her des­per­ate at­tempts to try and save her son, an emo­tion­al George de­scribed her fi­nal mo­ments with the tod­dler even as the fire con­tin­ued to spread.

“In the four or ten min­utes when I went to get help and come back, the place al­ready on fire. When I open the back win­dow, the fire blaz­ing on me. All my hair every­thing get burn up,” George said.

“I try­ing to throw wa­ter and he pulling me down. He say ‘Mom­my fire,’ I was say­ing Jereem in­side there, but I say­ing no... No­body could be so evil. They not go­ing to see my child and do that.”

George sus­tained sev­er­al mi­nor burns dur­ing the fire, but was strug­gling to deal with the child’s death.

Rel­a­tives, in their at­tempts to con­sole and set­tle George, said in ad­di­tion to the grief, she was al­so ex­haust­ed af­ter hav­ing no rest since the in­ci­dent on Thurs­day night.

De­scrib­ing Jereem as her “sweet­heart,” George said he was re­cent­ly en­rolled in pre-school and was well-liked by the staff for his in­tel­li­gence and man­ners.

Al­so speak­ing with Guardian Me­dia, George’s moth­er and Jereem’s grand­moth­er, An­tonette George, said she knew the man who is be­lieved to have start­ed the fire, ad­mit­ting that she ex­pect­ed “some­thing bad” would hap­pen giv­en his vi­o­lent, threat­en­ing ten­den­cies.

The el­der George said her daugh­ter made at least three re­ports to the po­lice about as­saults, in­clud­ing one in­ci­dent in which her daugh­ter was hit with an ob­ject and the most re­cent be­ing just last week, when the man dam­aged Ge­niel’s cell­phone.

De­spite this, An­tonette did not ex­pect lit­tle Jereem to suf­fer and was shak­en by the in­ci­dent, as she felt her daugh­ter was at greater risk from the man.

“I wasn’t ex­pect­ing this, I was ex­pect­ing him to do some­thing to her (George),” An­tonette said.

“I didn’t ex­pect him (the sus­pect) to do that be­cause you can’t tell me you see­ing a lit­tle child on the bed and you would do some­thing like that? Be­cause when you bust the back win­dow, you see­ing the bed right there with the child sleep­ing on the bed, why would you do that?”

She said de­spite his young age, Jereem was as an in­quis­i­tive child who con­stant­ly spoke to oth­er rel­a­tives about his ex­pe­ri­ences at school and showed an in­ter­est in foot­ball.

“He al­ready knows his ABCs, he knows how to count. He would even save back his snacks so he can have more to car­ry to school the next day.”

Asked about the fam­i­ly’s claims that George made three re­ports to po­lice about threat­en­ing be­hav­iour from the sus­pect, ACP North-West and Spe­cial Op­er­a­tions Richard Smith, dur­ing a TTPS me­dia brief­ing yes­ter­day, said while he could not con­firm whether a re­port was made, he would in­quire to ver­i­fy if that was the case.

Smith, how­ev­er, de­scribed the crime as “heinous” and vowed to pur­sue the sus­pect.

“We would in fact de­ploy all our re­sources to solv­ing this crime, go­ing af­ter the per­pe­tra­tor and putting him where he’s sup­posed to be.”

Re­spond­ing to ques­tions via What­sApp, Lopinot/Bon Air MP Mar­vin Gon­za­les of­fered con­do­lences to the fam­i­ly.

He said of­fi­cials from his con­stituen­cy of­fice vis­it­ed the home and were in con­tact with Jereem’s rel­a­tives and work­ing close­ly with the Min­istry of So­cial De­vel­op­ment and Fam­i­ly Ser­vices to of­fer what­ev­er help nec­es­sary.

“I al­so reached out to Min­is­ter Don­na Cox and we spoke a short while on the mat­ter and she is al­so mo­bil­is­ing the fam­i­ly ser­vices unit of her min­istry to reach out to the moth­er and fam­i­ly mem­bers to as­sess their needs at this time and pro­vide them with all of the sup­port.”

Gon­za­les de­clined to com­ment fur­ther as it was un­der in­ves­ti­ga­tion.

Jereem’s death is be­ing in­ves­ti­gat­ed as a mur­der. Of­fi­cers of the Re­gion II Homi­cide Bu­reau vis­it­ed the home yes­ter­day as part of in­quiries.