Residents of Trents, St. James Call for Urgent Police and Child Care Board Intervention Amid Concerns Over Behavior of Eight-Year-Old Boy

Residents in Trents, St James, say they are being traumatised by an eight-year-old boy and are calling for an urgent intervention by police and the Child Care Board.

The boy is said to have a violent streak, harms and injures both people and animals, uses profanity towards adults and has an obsession with fire.

The situation was brought to light on Wednesday evening when he lit a mattress which was in a container, causing a fire to break out in the close-knit neighbourhood.

Fearing that it could spread to nearby houses, some residents grabbed hoses and doused the flames, which started to burn a tree next to the container.

Police were called but residents said they never turned up.

Situation

“People was calling the police at Holetown Station and all they ask is if the fire out. Nobody ain’t turn up to deal with this situation even though they are familiar with this boy,” an upset resident said.

The boy lives with his 24-year-old mother, five siblings and other family members.

A woman said she went into panic mode when a neighbour ran to her and said there was a fire next door to her house.

“A man come out here and ask me if I ain’t see all the smoke,” said the woman, who was at the back of her house. “I almost [wet] my pants because my husband, who is disabled, was at home.

“I run out there and see a lot of smoke. The boy mother was also out there and all she keep saying is that something wrong with he head. This fire could’ve spread to even their house,” the upset woman said.

Complained

She said she has complained to the mother repeatedly about the boy lighting fire on the open land.

“Whenever I speak to the boy about his behaviour, he does tell me, ‘[expletive] you and carry yuh [expletive]’, so I don’t have anything to say to him, but yuh can’t talk to the mother either.

“You imagine he always out there saying he roasting breadfruit and saying he cooking chicken. I saw him put a fowl in a cage and when the fowl was fighting to get out, he bend the fowl legs and say: ‘I gine kill you’.”

Her husband said he also tried to speak to the boy’s mother and also the lad about his recalcitrant behaviour, but to no avail.

“If you go out there he gine curse you. She [the mother] does curse

you too. The other day, I told her: ‘I wouldn’t even complain to you fuh he because he gine curse you’ and she tell me that is he mouth. That little boy real hard ears. He does light a fire out here every day saying he roasting breadfruit.”