Body Of School Girl Found In Barrel In Trinidad

PORT OF SPAIN, Trinidad CMC – Police ended the four-day search for six-year-old Keyana Cumberbatch, after her body was found stuffed in a barrel in a bedroom at her home, late last week Thursday.

Residents became angry and called for justice as the body was being removed from the apartment at Maloney, east of here.

Police said the smell of decomposing flesh alerted the school girl’s mother, Simone Williams, 27, to the terrible possibility that her eldest daughter’s body may have been inside the apartment since Monday when she was reported missing while returning from the St. Barbara’s Shouter Baptist Primary School, where she was a second-year pupil.

A male relative of the girl has been in police custody since Tuesday. He was arrested after residents reported to police that he was the last person to be seen with the girl prior to her disappearance.

Keyana’s mother reported to police that her daughter would usually go to her grandmother’s apartment across the roadway every evening after returning home from school.

Investigators said the suspect told police he had walked the girl to the building where her grandmother’s apartment was located and saw her enter the building.

This is the second occasion within a week that a child has been found dead in Trinidad.

Last week, police investigating the disappearance of one-year-old Jacob Munroe from his Maracas Valley, St. Joseph home, found the baby’s body in a cesspit in the yard of the family residence.

His father is still assisting police in their investigations.