Mom blames smelter protest for baby’s death

Camille Clarke
Published: 11 Jun 2009
http://guardian.co.tt/news/general/2009/06/11/mom-blames-smelter-protest-baby-s-death

The parents of the baby boy, Melissa Thomas and her husband Stamlin, at the Forensic Science Centre yesterday. Photo: Karla Ramoo
Camille Clarke

A mother is blaming the protest against the use of foreign labour at the smelter plant in La Brea for the death of her one-month-old baby. The mother Melissa Thomas said her baby was not officially registered and died after doctors attempted to revive him at the Point Fortin District Hospital on Tuesday morning. His name would have been Joel Thomas. The baby rolled off a bed at his Sobo Village home on Tuesday morning and was caught between the bed and a wall, Thomas said.

Family members attempted to take him to the hospital to save his life but were met by a traffic jam caused by the protest against the Alutrint aluminium smelter in La Brea. The villagers have been protesting the use of foreign labour over local at the facility under construction. The protest continued yesterday with Prime Minister Patrick Manning visiting the area. Thomas said around 8 am on Tuesday, she had put her seventh child to sleep and later heard him crying.

“When I looked he was stuck between the bed and the wall in a small space...I saw that he was squeezed up and we tried to take him to the hospital,” Thomas said yesterday, during an interview at the Forensic Science Centre in St James. Thomas cried after viewing the baby’s body before the autopsy. “We were held up in a roadblock for over one hour with the protesters,” she said. After that we put on the hazard lights on the car and begged a police man to let us through,” she said. The policeman permitted the family to pass through the roadblock, Thomas said.

The doctors at the hospital attempted to revive the baby, to no avail. “We could have saved him in that time we spent there in that traffic. These people can’t study themselves. Suppose somebody had a worse emergency than that? I don’t want that to happen to someone else,” Thomas said. She said she did not register the baby because a mother had up to six weeks to register a birth. The autopsy revealed the baby died of asphyxia.Detectives said they did help them through the roadblock and the hour that was taken in traffic could have saved the baby’s life.
La Brea police are continuing investigations.