KINGSTON, Jamaica, CMC -Police say a 20-year-old mother, who is alleged to have drowned her two-month-old son in a bucket of water on Tuesday, is a mental health patient.
Acting commander for the Manchester Police, Deputy Superintendent Luhas Daniels, told the Jamaica Observer newspaper that the woman is on a mental health programme and that she was home alone with the child after her partner left to go to work.
“She called her child’s father, who was on the farm, to say that she drowned the child. The mental health team held her, and she is at the hospital,” Daniels told the newspaper.
Relatives identified the 10-week-old baby as Mateo Forbes and said he was born on December 21 last year. His grandfather, Geoffrey Forbes, told the newspaper that the incident saddened him.
“A my grandson. I don’t even know him yet, because he was born, but I don’t see him. And when I heard that the girl drown him in the pan, boy, the whole community grieve, because is the first this ever happen in the district… Some people bawl. We never feel that this would happen,” he said.
“I don’t even know how my son is taking it, because the police brought him to the station to sort out some papers,” he said, adding that the mother had packed up her things and left.
The father said he had advised his son to end the relationship with the woman, “but he said he loves her, so he lives with that…
Sometimes she was given an injection and she [was calm] for a while,” the man said while accusing the woman of previously setting ablaze his son’s house.
He said his son’s last interaction with the infant was early Tuesday morning when he bathed the child.
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