Infant dies – 18-year-old mother assisting police with investigations

Police said on Wednesday they were treating as a homicide, the death of a one-year-old boy at Robertson Hill, Arnos Vale, whose 18-year-old mother, reports say, may have smothered him with a pillow. {{more}}

Investigators told SEARCHLIGHT that McKealti Peters’ mother, Mischicha Peters, a former Girls’ High School student, was assisting them with their investigation into the death of her son.

Police, who were called to scene around 2 p.m. Wednesday, said they met the infant’s aunt sitting on a septic tank in a neighbour’s yard with the dead boy in her arms.

The cops said they were told that the child’s mother had fled the scene, but added that she was taken into custody that same afternoon.

Mischicha’s mother — whose name was given as Jasmine Peters — told SEARCHLIGHT she did not want to comment about the death of her grandson.

The grandmother, who asked police to allow her to see her grandson again before funeral home employees took him away, touched the chest of the dead boy, who was wearing only disposable diapers, but was covered with a towel as he lay on the septic tank.

The grandmother left the scene shortly after, seemingly to accompany two children — who were reportedly also at home when the child died — to the police station, supposedly to tell police what they had witnessed.

But Anthony Alexander, one of the Peters’ neighbours, told SEARCHLIGHT of the developments Wednesday afternoon.

“I was in the shower and I hearing ‘Hello! Hello!’ … When I come out, I see the little youth man telling me to call the police because a girl now kill she baby over there,” Alexander said, adding that the boy who sought his help appeared to be 7 or 8 years old.

“He said a girl just stifle she baby with a pillow and kill him. So, I get little frighten, so ah call the lady dey and the lady call police and thing.”

But Alexander said that even as he was speaking with the lad, he noticed a little girl, of about six or seven years nearby.

“I see the girl have the baby in she hand and the baby neck a go back so,”Alexander said, as he demonstrated a limp neck.

“From the time ah see how the head go, ah say the baby dead,” said Alexander, who then called out to Nicole Aberdeen, another resident of the house.

“I asked the little guy where the lady (the mother of the child). He said the lady run go down somewhere there,” Alexander further said of his inquiries about the mother of the child.

“… He (the boy) said she (the mother of the child) go down the road there fast, Alexander further said.

Aberdeen, who reported the development to the police, also told SEARCHLIGHT what she saw.

“When I went outside, I met the little boy halfway in the walkway. And he said, ‘Please, please; miss, help’.

“I said, ‘What happened?’ He said the lady came home, take the kid from them downstairs, take him upstairs of the house, locked the bedroom and put the pillow — and then jumped through the window. When they go, when they got the kid, he already dead. He is helpless. And she run down the gap. So they tell me call the police,” Aberdeen said.

Aberdeen said she started to cry, went into the street, and met a doctor who happened to be passing by.

“He said the child is warm [but] the child is dead,” Aberdeen said.

Sources told SEARCHLIGHT that Mischicha — who residents said celebrated her birthday yesterday — became pregnant in 2011, during her final year at the GHS.

She wrote her school-leaving examinations while she was pregnant and performed relatively well, sources said.

Station Sergeant Trevor Bailey is heading the investigation. (kentonchance@searchlight.vc)