Autopsy reveals… 

Schoolboy battered, dumped alive in canal

Twelve-year-old Letroy Hinds-Harris was severely beaten, and possibly sodomised, before being dumped, while still alive, in a Thomas Road canal, police said yesterday.

An autopsy performed yesterday revealed that the schoolboy died from drowning, but also showed that he was first subjected to a severe beating, and might have also been sexually assaulted.

“He was struck at least three times in the head with a blunt object, and there were marks of violence on the chest, neck, and hands,” a source told Kaieteur News last night.

“There is no doubt that he was murdered.”

The lad's body also bore injuries that indicated that he was sexually assaulted.

Detectives have questioned several persons in a bid to track down the lad's killers.

Among those questioned were two boys from Sophia, who are believed to be among those who last saw the St. Winefride's Secondary School student alive.

Kaieteur News understands that the lads have alleged that they left Letroy at the Demico bus park while they caught a bus to Sophia.

Letroy Hinds's nude body was fished out of the southern Thomas Road canal at around 07:00hrs on Thursday.

His clothes and a pair of boots were found a short distance away.

A police release had said that blood was seen oozing from Harris's nose and mouth. At the time, police had stated that there were no visible marks of violence on the corpse.

Letroy's mother, Regina Hinds, recalled that her son had left the family's ‘A' Field, Sophia home at around 15:00 hrs on Tuesday in the company of two friends.

She said that Letroy, who had his cricket bat and pads, informed her that they were going to play cricket at a Thomas Lands playfield.

When he failed to return that evening, Ms. Hinds said, she questioned his two friends about his whereabouts.

“They said that they went to cricket together and they don't know where he gone,” she said.

She resumed the search next day, checking at the club and also at the various car parks in the city.

On Thursday morning, she was at home when she heard on the radio that a boy's body had been found in a Thomas Lands canal.

Suspecting that the victim was her son, Ms. Hinds phoned her sister to go to identify the body.

Her worst fears were confirmed after the sister and Letroy's father identified the victim as her son.

The body was reportedly found a short distance from the ground where the lad often played cricket.

Ms. Hinds, who has always suspected foul play, said she returned to the cricket ground that same afternoon.

She alleges that she saw some of Letroy's friends playing cricket and that she immediately realised that one of the boys, who had reportedly last seen her son alive, was wearing her son's cricket pads and gloves.

She alleged that at first the lad denied that the cricket gear was her son's, until she and other relatives saw that Letroy had written his name on the pads.

The woman said that the lad then claimed that Letroy had left the cricket gear at the club.

However, Ms. Hinds insists that her son always brought home his cricket gear.

Ms. Hinds, who is a single parent, described her son as a loving boy “who always wanted to see me get up in life.”

He is survived by two younger siblings.

Sunday 11-05-2006