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alexk
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Alisha James should have been happy on Thursday when she won the winning mark, Corbeaux, in Play Whe draw. However, right after that trip to a recreation club to play the mark she returned home and found her seven-month-old daughter Sheniah James dead among garbage bags. While there was speculation the child suffocated between the bags of clothes in the bedroom of their Pleasantville home, an autopsy at the Forensic Science Centre, S James, yesterday by Dr Hughvon des Vignes found Sheniah died from a collapsed lung.
James told the T&T Guardian yesterday that Sheniah’s right lung collapsed as a result of an infection, but Homicide investigators said they were not given a reason for the collapsed lung. Nonetheless, they have ruled the death as of a natural cause.
A police report stated that around 9.45 am James, 39, left Sheniah lying on the bed with her father Reynold Brewster, 63, who was sleeping at the time. When James returned around 10.20 am she found Sheniah lying face down among clothes and unresponsive. Brewster was still asleep at the time. Sgt Julien, Cpl Nanan, PC Ramcharit visited the scene and interviewed the child’s family.
Investigators were told the child may have accidentally rolled onto the clothes and suffocated. They said attempts were made to revive Sheniah and she was eventually taken to the San Fernando General Hospital but was pronounced dead.
Sitting on the stairway to her home yesterday, James said she wished she had not gone to play the $5 mark. As an unemployed housewife, she said it was how she got extra money for herself and daughters Had she not gone, she believes she could have done something to save her daughter’s life.
She explained, “Well, I left my baby lying down, drinking tea with her father and I went down the road to play some marks yesterday around 9.30. When I done play the mark and I came back home I opened the door and I did not see her on the side of him so I asked ‘where mama?’ I heard my nephew inside there so I thought he had her.
“I left my husband how he sleeping there and I gone asking my nephew where the baby and he said she they with her father. Me and him came to check for the baby inside there. We didn’t see her, she was not on the bed. I woke up my husband good now and asked him where the baby? He said he did not know. When I do watch, I see at the side of the bed where there were two garbage bags with clothes, her feet.”
It is believed Sheniah slipped off the bed and her head and torso became stuffed between the garbage bags.
With sadness on her face, James said she hoped to get to dress her daughter at the funeral home for the last time. But she said she was shocked that clinicians did not detect an infection in her daughter’s lungs, as she said since Sheniah was born prematurely they attended the clinic regularly. On July 13, James said they went to the clinic at the Pleasantville Health Centre and she was supposed to take her next to the clinic at the San Fernando General Hospital.