By Grace Q. Bryant
A group under the banner ‘Affiliation of Women and Children Rights Advocates’, staged a protest yesterday at the entrance of the Liberia National Police Headquarters demanding the free and speedy investigation into the 11-year old boy identified as Jeremy Brown allegedly starved to death by his parents.
Speaking with spokesman Mohammed C. Jalloh yesterday, he expressed regrets and disappointment in the preliminary results in the LNP Facebook page and are therefore demanding a free and fair trial.
“We are frustrated because the Police are still delaying to send their report to the court, and moreover it is the responsibility of the police to investigate and our responsibility to pressurize them to give factual report,” spokesman Jalloh explained.
He added, ” this will be the very last case that the Liberia National Police will compromise. In fact, I have been on this case from the very onset at the time we heard that yes, indeed, the child died on Sunday, but we heard the news on Monday, and since then, I have not been sleeping and been working with my team. I’m here today to give detailed information about the little boy because I have been on every investigation field.
According to him, the deputy of DSA further explained that they cannot arrest the stepmother of the child because she is pregnant and did not do anything criminal because the Liberia National Police preliminary reports said that the child has been sick for a long period of time.
It can be called that Emmanuel Brown, the biological father and his wife believed to be the stepmother to the deceased observed that little Brown suffered from epilepsy and decided to place the child in an abandoned zinc structure.
According to information gathered by our team, the young boy was kept in that zinc house for close to 5 months with little or nothing to eat or to drink.
During that period, the child resulted to eating plastic bags and pieces of a little mattress which was left in the room where he was kept as a prisoner. He was later found covered with insects and ants all over his body.
The information further explained that when the community dwellers called on the police to intervene, it was too late for the child. Within less than an hour of discovering the child, bystanders fought to take several pieces of plastics from his throat to feed and quench his thirst, but he passed away due to starvation.
The father, Emmanuel Brown is currently under police custody, while his step-mother is roaming the streets of Monrovia smiling as though she had achieved something she worked hard to achieve.
The Liberia National Police arrested the step-mother but was later released due to her pregnancy.