BASSETERRE, St.Kitts (Friday 29th January 2021)- A professional in the field of counseling, in speaking with this media house, has commented on the ongoing public debate concerning the six-month old baby girl who recently died after being left in her father’s vehicle.
“Human nature is to blame somebody but at the end of the day, these things do happen unfortunately. People are always going to always have opinions but we as society cannot be the judge and executor of incidents of this kind; we can only assume that something was going on to forget the child for that period of time.”
“In the field of counseling, we understand fully that as human beings we all have weaknesses and strengths. That is why Christ said…‘Let him who is without sin cast the first stone’. Incidents like these call for community consultation but as I said before incidents like these happen all the time for example in Trinidad, the US and other countries. It’s just about the person at the time and what they might have been going through or what was going,” the counselor added.
The professional has also shared that in a situation like this, a judge would perhaps order a psychological evaluation.
“Maybe that’s what the judge would recommend to look at what circumstances happened which led him to being responsible for maybe neglect of the baby and [so] the baby died.”
Police are currently investigating the death of the infant who died on Friday 22nd January 2021.
An autopsy performed three days later on Monday 25th January by Resident Pathologist Dr. Adrian Nunez concluded that the cause of death was Hypoxic-Ischemic Encephalopathy due to Asphyxia as a consequence of confinement in a closed space (vehicle).
According to information from the Police Public Relations Department, police visited the JNF General Hospital on January 21, after receiving a report that an infant was brought to the Accident and Emergency room after being left in a car for several hours.
Police say preliminary investigations so far have revealed that the father, who had collected the baby to take her to the nursery, returned to work that morning. Sometime after midday, he went back to the vehicle and discovered the baby was still in the back seat. He took the baby to the Hospital where she was admitted and warded in the Intensive Care Unit. The infant died early the following morning.
Investigations into the matter are ongoing.