Officers from the Child Protection Unit and the Malabar Police Station were up to yesterday interviewing five children and their guardians, following the death of a child in a house fire on Sunday.
The adults, the children’s mother Abigaile Mota and stepfather Terrance Wilson, were both not at home when the fire took place around 1 pm.
Police said yesterday that some of the information was “not adding up” and they wanted to speak to the children and adults again. The children were initially questioned and put in the care of other relatives on Sunday night, as both their mother and stepfather were kept in police custody.
Three-year-old Tyran Garcia died as a result of smoke inhalation according to the autopsy report. At the time of the fire, the child, along with her four siblings, were in the care of a 14-year-old.
Speaking with the T&T Guardian on Sunday night, the child’s father, Terron Garcia, said he had begged for his only child to live with him in Maloney but was denied.
“What I want to know is why my child? She never asked to be born. I know something like this would have happened ... I tell police I will take my child, but they told me that would be kidnapping and I could get lock up and is better I face the court, but look what go on now,” Garcia said, adding the last time he saw his child was a month ago.
The 14-year-old told police she was alerted to the fire by her eight-year-old sister, who began shouting that the bed was on fire. She added that she took all the children out the house, which does not have electricity, and returned to try to put out the blaze.
“I went back in with a bucket to out the blaze and the fire blow up in my face and it had real smoke so I pass through the back. That’s when I start to hear Tyran screaming out my name, but I couldn’t do anything. I couldn’t go back inside,” the teen said.
Little Tyran, who attended Precious Lambs Kindergarten in Maloney, was found behind a space saver in the living room, where fire officials believed she ran to avoid the flames.
According to fire officials, the blaze started around 1.30 pm in the upper part of the two-storey building at Herman Gerard Avenue, Malabar. Fire officials who returned to the site yesterday did not give a cause for the blaze.
Both the mother and stepfather yesterday accepted an offer for counselling for the family. The offer was made by socially conscious group ReThink.
