A three-year-old boy, who is suspected to have been kidnapped on Monday from outside his Hyde Park, Timehri home, was taken to the Grove Police Station yesterday and police are searching for the woman accused of taking him.
John Maynard and his wife Allisha Craig searched parts of city for the toddler, Julian Maynard, for many hours but came up empty-handed. Following hours of searching, the worried parents who operate a snackette from their home, reported the matter to the police. After the matter was reported, a woman took their three-year-old child to the Grove Police Station, claiming that she had found him on the street.
It is still unclear why the woman, who has relatives living in the Timehri area, took the child, Allisha Craig said last evening. “When de woman show up at de Grove Station, the police didn’t know about the story so they thought she was just bringing in a wandering child so they collect the child and let her go…but after we tell them de full story they say they looking for her to arrest she,” she explained.
Craig further said that the description which Grove police provided of the woman who took Julian to them matches the description of the woman who was last seen with her child on Monday. Up to press time the woman was not yet arrested.
A visibly shaken Craig told Stabroek News that they had spent most of yesterday searching parts of Sophia, where the woman reportedly lives. They also searched the city’s pavements. The woman said that at the time she did not know what else to do.
She explained that sometime after 6 pm on Monday, the woman, believed to be in her early 20s, visited her snackette and purchased some liquor. Craig noted that the woman’s aunt lived next door and her grandmother lived two buildings away. The woman had previously visited the shop several times.
According to Craig, the woman paid for the beverage and she left her sitting at the bar, while the toddler and his five-year-old brother were sitting in a nearby chair. Subsequently, she recalled, she sent the elder child on an errand, while the younger boy remained in the shop.
The woman said that a few minutes later, her husband, who was proceeding to the shop, noticed the woman holding the child’s hand at the side of the building. Maynard said the woman was speaking to the child and he immediately called him. The man said he asked his son about the conversation with the woman but the child did not respond. The man admitted to this newspaper that he did not pay much attention to what had transpired but remembered the child being next to him in the shop.
However, the boy later told his mother that the woman had left and went to the shop next door. Craig said that she thought nothing of it, since the woman had already paid for her drink. However, she returned a few minutes later and the child ran out of the shop. Craig said she subsequently sent her husband to check on the boy but he found neither the child nor the woman.
Craig immediately inquired from the woman’s aunt where she was but the woman said “dem two ain’t family and that she ain’t know where she is.”
Desperate to find her child, Craig said she searched the whole of Timehri and eventually ended up at the woman’s grandmother’s house.
“I went to the grandmother and I tell she dat she grandaughter pick up me child and she say that she ain’t know nothing and dat de girl came out the lock ups earlier in the day,” she said sadly.
According to Craig, it was at this point that she went to the Timehri Police Outpost and made a report. She said the police questioned the grandmother who gave them a fake Sophia address. The woman said when they checked the area yesterday that address did not exist.
Asked why the woman would have wanted to take their child, Maynard said that he was clueless.
