By Svetlana Marshall
TWENTY-EIGHT-year-old Sonia King, who reportedly confessed to the recent murder of her only son, had allegedly thrown him through a door when he was just six months old, according to relatives.Eight-year-old Emmanuel King was allegedly strangled by his mother last Sunday night at their La Parfaite-Harmonie Onderneeming, West Bank Demerara home. King, who is eight months pregnant with her second child, is currently in police custody assisting with the investigation at the Den Amstel Police Station.

According to the Guyana Police Force, King initially alleged that her son had fallen out of a tree and subsequently succumbed to his injuries. However, during investigations into the matter, she is alleged to have told investigators that she had strangled the child.
Her reputed husband Robert Vieira, who was at home at the time of the incident, in an exclusive interview with the Guyana Chronicle on Thursday, said he had no idea that little Emmanuel was murdered until King confessed to him on Monday morning. Vieira said that after a hectic day with the family on Sunday, he opted to watch a movie in the comfort of his bed in the lone bedroom of their home. King, as was the custom, had gone to check up on little Emmanuel in the kitchen where he usually slept.
“She came back about half an hour after and say that Emmanuel dead…I seh what you mean Emmanuel dead?”
Upon hearing the terrible news, Vieira reportedly made several attempts to revive his foster-son but to no avail. “I get scared, so I ran on the road to get a taxi…but I wasn’t getting nobody, so I begged my neighbour to take he and his mother to the hospital.”
However, on his arrival at the West Demerara Regional Hospital, the child was pronounced dead. Up to this point, Vieira was of the opinion that little Emmanuel had died due to injuries he may have sustained after falling from a guava tree earlier that day.
But he was subsequently faced with the sad reality on Monday when King reportedly confessed to him, saying that she attempted to kill little Emmanuel twice before Sunday’s tragedy.
“She said she tried killing him two times and this third time she succeed,” Vieira said as he reflected on King’s confession. Questioned as to the motive, Vieira alleged that King once said she and Emmanuel’s biological father were bad parents to him and as such, she was worried about the man he would become.

Upon hearing the confession Monday morning, Vieira said he became fearful for his life. However it was only until Tuesday night that he informed the police of the confession.
“Tuesday night, a police called me and said tell your wife, 8 o’clock in the morning is the post-mortem…but I told him no, no, hear what happen, she did it, she told me she did it.”
She was subsequently taken into custody for the murder of her eight-year-old son. Asked why an earlier report was not made to the police about the confession, Vieira said he was fearful that the police would have attempted to implicate him, given an earlier matter in which he was “framed” and as such was waiting on a particular rank, whom he deemed be a “good man,” to call him back.

But little Emmanuel’s father Ludwig Kryenhoff is maintaining that Vieira had “a hand” in his son’s death. He received the awful news around 00:30 hrs on Monday after King had returned from the hospital.
“Neighbours told me that the step-father was beating him, and like he fall down and hit a part of his body and die, and they put him to lie down…but is he [Vieira] son that telling people that they beat my son and strangled him, he own son saying that,” Kryenhoff said.
Vieira’s two sons live in the same yard but in different apartments.

“A night I was going out but she did not want me to go, and she pick up this little boy and fling him through the door, I barely catch him,” he recalled.

A report was subsequently made to the Alberttown Police Station, where she was given a warning. Several weeks after, she left the country, leaving little Emmanuel behind.

“She disappeared for two years and a half,” he posited. Upon her return, she took custody of him, but would periodically leave him with his father and aunt to travel to Trinidad and Tobago where she once lived.
Emmanuel’s aunt Venture, echoed similar sentiments. “He was up and down all day and before mid-night we heard the child dead,” she posited.
Venture said at first they thought King was playing a “sick joke,” but became very concerned when a neighbour told her that “Emmanuel was beaten and strangled to death.”

The post-mortem is expected to be conducted today.