A 15-year-old boy who claimed his parents were dead and he was forced to live on the streets confessed yesterday he had lied. When the teenager reappeared before San Fernando Sixth Court magistrate Lisa Ramsumair-Hinds yesterday, he confessed that he had lied to her about his parents. The teenager is before Ramsumair-Hinds for sentencing for stealing a cellphone two weeks ago.
The teen was charged with stealing the phone from a disabled man in a wheelchair, at Super Pharm in Gulf City, La Romaine, on November 21. He pleaded guilty and was remanded to St Michael’s Home, pending a probation officer’s report. When he appeared in the San Fernando Sixth Court on Wednesday, the teen pleaded with the magistrate to let him live with one of the police officers in the court at the time.
He had told the magistrate he lived on the streets and wanted money to buy food to eat. He also said he never attended school. Yesterday when he returned to court he admitted his mother was alive and said he did not know his father. He said he lived with his mother in La Romaine, but now she was living with a man in Pleasantville, and he did not want the teen around. The teen said he attended primary school, but he stopped when he reached Standard One.
Ramsumair-Hinds said she was not certain if the teenager was telling the truth because he changed his story so often. She asked the police to find his mother. She adjourned sentencing to next week Thursday and asked the police to bring the teen’s mother to court on that day. Ramsumair-Hinds said she was more interested in the factors that caused the teen to lie to her than the lies he had told.