‘Spiritualist’ arrested after PM reveals 8-yr-old was strangled
A woman who locks herself in a dilapidated house and prays all day, is the prime suspect in the
Dead: Isaiah Smartt
death of eight-year-old Isaiah Smartt, whose body was pulled from a shallow drain on Tuesday night at ‘E’ Field, Sophia.
A post mortem performed on the lad’s body yesterday revealed that he died from asphyxiation due to Bronchoaspiration and compounded by compression injuries to the neck.
The child’s relatives are convinced that it was a sacrificial murder and as such, investigators have arrested a spiritualist in whose yard the body was found.
The woman was arrested late yesterday and taken to the Alberttown Police Station where she gave a statement and was subsequently taken into custody.
The boy’s body was found in the drain that is about two-feet deep, one day after he went missing
What is strange is that the spiritualist claimed that she did not see the body although the discovery was made right next to her back door—at the side of her house.
What is even more suspicious is the fact that the woman has to walk right at the side of the house to go to the bathroom and to her mother’s home where she sleeps.
There are three houses in the yard—the spiritualist’s family lives in the front house, the middle and back houses are abandoned.
It is in the back house that the woman reportedly carries out her sacrificial acts. While the yard is used by some residents as a short cut to get to the other street, some persons are scared to walk there.
“The house is empty. It only has an altar shelf and she is in there all day praying. She locks herself in and lights candle and pray,” the lad’s mother, Joycelyn Pickett, said during an interview yesterday, while adding that the moment she spotted her son’s body in the drain, she suspected something was fishy.
“My son can’t drown in 12 inches of water,” the woman maintained.
The spot where the lad’s body was discovered.
When this newspaper visited the area yesterday, a young man said that when the discovery was made, almost everyone knew he was killed and his body was placed there.
“He had blood coming from his eyes and it looked like someone lifted him and put him in the drain. That lil boy does be swimming in the trench, so he cannot die in a drain with water that didn’t reach my knee,” the young man noted.
He said that the little boy walked through the yard a lot to get to the other street where he would usually swim and pick mangoes. “His family dem didn’t had time with this lil boy. Some nights, he alone dey does lef in that house and you does see he walking the streets all day.”
Meanwhile, recalling what transpired, Pickett noted that the lad left home with his sister on Monday.
A relative saw him cutting callaloo with a cutlass in his sister’s backyard while dressed in a raincoat and long boots. He was using his little sister’s umbrella.
After cutting the callaloo, he was seen walking through the woman’s yard—this was the last time he was seen alive.
Pickett said when her son did not return home, she thought that he was at his father’s home, since the man lives in the same neighbourhood.
”His sister thought that he was mad at me, and I thought he was at his father. On Tuesday afternoon, my great nephew went to fill water in the neighbour yard when he saw the umbrella. He picked it up and he saw the coat floating,” Pickett said.
Upon further examination, they discovered that it was the child’s remains. Pickett said that her great nephew took a stick and tried to pull him out.
According to the child’s mother, she was told that when her great nephew took the stick to pull the rain coat, the spiritualist started shouting on him and even when her daughter started crying, the woman asked them why they were crying.
Investigations are ongoing.