T&T boy, 13, was raped, strangled to death

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Joash Pantin
Joash Pantin

(Trinidad Guardian) Shocked rel­a­tives of Joash Pan­tin, 13, emerged from the Foren­sic Sci­ence Cen­tre in St James yes­ter­day af­ter­noon with their eyes filled with tears, as their great­est fears were re­alised when the au­top­sy con­firmed he was bug­gered and stran­gled to death.

Po­lice sources told the T&T Guardian that they had ar­rest­ed two sus­pects, ages 36 and 16, in con­nec­tion with the heinous crime.

Speak­ing with the T&T Guardian min­utes af­ter close rel­a­tives and friends ex­it­ed the cen­tre, a male rel­a­tive, who wished not to be iden­ti­fied, said the fam­i­ly be­came even more “de­pressed, shocked and pained” af­ter get­ting the au­top­sy re­sults.

“Luck­i­ly, the po­lice have two of them in­side. In fact, one of them live close to where Joash lived and they say­ing that he is known to prey on chil­dren, that this is not the first time,” the rel­a­tive said.

Pan­tin’s great un­cle Hay­den Wil­son de­scribed the per­pe­tra­tor/s as ei­ther a “psy­chopath or so­ciopath.”

“Be­cause that is what it is ba­si­cal­ly, they killed my nephew and it is not go­ing to end there. We are hop­ing for jus­tice one way or an­oth­er…with peo­ple it is dif­fi­cult to see why they do what they do.”

Wil­son al­so ex­pressed dis­ap­point­ment at the way the po­lice han­dled the case from the time the first re­port was made that he had gone miss­ing. He al­so slammed the po­lice for their tar­di­ness in es­cort­ing the body to the FSC, giv­en the fact that the al­ready dis­tressed fam­i­ly mem­bers, in­clud­ing Pan­tin’s moth­er, ar­rived at the cen­tre at 9 am. The body ar­rived af­ter mid­day.

“Joash is a Pan­tin, from the Pan­tin clan and still it was not im­por­tant enough, so this is a re­flec­tion of how they have han­dled this ini­tial­ly. It is on­ly be­cause my niece called peo­ple that she knew that they got up and did…which is not right,” Wil­son said.

“You’re not sup­posed to be a some­body to get things done, be­cause we all are some­bod­ies and the peo­ple who are in charge need to take this in­to con­sid­er­a­tion, that you work for us and we don’t work for you so that when we make a call you are sup­posed to be there. We are not say­ing in a sec­ond but show more con­cern be­cause this con­cern that they showed is lack­ing.”

How­ev­er, when he got the news from the po­lice that they had two sus­pects in cus­tody he said he was pleased.

“At least the po­lice show­ing that they work­ing on ap­pre­hend­ing the peo­ple re­spon­si­ble for this.”

Wil­son de­scribed Pan­tin as a very in­tel­li­gent young boy who ranked 17th in the SEA ex­am­i­na­tions this year and was in his first year at Trin­i­ty Col­lege in Mo­ka.

“He was very loved. He loved to learn. He loved to teach. He was a very help­ful child, es­pe­cial­ly to his moth­er,” Wil­son said.

Pan­tin’s moth­er, Chimene, who was very dis­traught, said her son would have been cel­e­brat­ing his 14th birth­day this Fri­day. She said her son was re­lat­ed to the late Arch­bish­op An­tho­ny Pan­tin and added that his great un­cle was Fa­ther Cyril Ross.

“He grew up with priests and nuns and came from a staunch Catholic home. He had sev­er­al awards at the pri­ma­ry schools he at­tend­ed. I have a whole lot of peo­ple in mourn­ing. I have fam­i­ly from as far as the Nether­lands call­ing me and ask­ing me ques­tions,” she said.

“There is noth­ing that any­body can say that can con­sole me at this time but I have a sup­port net­work and I will get through this like I have got­ten through with any­thing else.”

Chimene said they had lived at Cashew Gar­dens in the past and had re­cent­ly moved back in­to the area, but did not dis­close the rea­son for her re­turn.

 

 

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