Director of Public Prosecutions Roger Gaspard, SC, last night gave officers from the Homicide Bureau orders to charge the 28-year-old suspect held in connection with the rape and murder of six-year-old Keyana Cumberbatch. The T&T Guardian was informed that police close to the case had been constantly consulting with the DPP’s office and were initially told this week to dig deeper, as the case was a complicated one.
The officers returned to the field, gathered more evidence for an air tight case and got the go ahead to charge the suspect last evening. Keyana went missing on November 25. She was last seen leaving her Maloney Gardens home en route to her grandmother’s, one building away. Her decomposing body was found three days later in her apartment, inside a plastic bag in a barrel next to her mother’s bed. Cumberbatch was hit in the head so severely that her skull was cracked. She was then sexually assaulted, an autopsy report said.
On Wednesday, Cumberbatch was buried at Crown Street Public Cemetery, after a closed-casket service at the Council of Elders Spiritual Shouter Baptist Empowerment Hall, off the Churchill-Roosevelt Highway. Police are also consulting with the DPP on the death of Jabari Hernandez, which they have deemed a homicide. Police said they had no one in custody in relation to Jabari’s death.
A preliminary autopsy done on Monday by forensic pathologist Dr Hughvon des Vignes at the Forensic Sciences Centre, St James, said the three-year-old died as a result of blunt force trauma. Further reports said Jabari suffered severe injuries to his abdomen, resulting in severe internal trauma. The child suffered trauma in the stomach, tear on the liver, and tear in the attachment tissue to the intestine which caused the peritonitis that triggered vomiting. The child was also undernourished.
—Reporting by Renuka Singh