By Svetlana Marshall
A PREGNANT Sonia King was on Friday remanded to prison over the murder of her eight-year-old son Emmanuel King at their West Bank Demerara home.
The 28-year-old woman appeared before Magistrate Rochelle Liverpool at the Leonora Magistrate’s Court charged with murder and was subsequently remanded.
It is alleged that on Sunday, February 21, 2016, while at their Lot 505 La Parfaite Harmonie, Onderneeming, West Bank Demerara home, she killed her only child while he was asleep.
According to results from the post-mortem, Emmanuel died as a result of suffocation.
King reportedly confessed to the crime on Monday to her reputed husband Robert Vieira, who informed the police on Tuesday evening. She was arrested the said night.
Initially, King told investigators that her son succumbed Sunday night after falling from a tree earlier that day. But on Wednesday, she gave a formal statement to investigators at Den Amstel Police Station, reportedly confessing to the crime.
At the time of the murder, Vieira was at home, but he is maintaining his innocence. According to him, both the fan and the television were on in his bedroom, which was tightly locked, so he could not have heard even if the little boy had screamed for help.
Vieira recalled that Sunday night, after checking up on Emmanuel in the kitchen where he slept, King returned to the bedroom, and delivered the troubling news that Emmanuel had died.
He said several attempts were made to revive Emmanuel but to no avail. The eight year old was pronounced dead upon arrival at the West Demerara Regional Hospital.
Vieira was also of the opinion that Emmanuel had died due to injuries he may have sustained after falling from a guava tree earlier that day.
HARROWING NEWS
But he was subsequently faced with the sad reality on Monday when King reportedly confessed to him, saying that she had attempted to kill little Emmanuel twice before Sunday’s tragedy.
Emmanuel’s father Ludwig Kryenhoff is maintaining that there is more to the story being told by King and Vieira. According to him, he had received reports from neighbours that Emmanuel was badly beaten on Sunday night although this claim was refuted by Vieira.
Kryenhoff said he last saw his son about 20:00hrs on Sunday. Kryenhoff lives two houses away from King. However, on Sunday he was staying at his sister Roma Venture’s home a short distance away at Lot 738 Westminster, WBD.
Emmanuel had spent most of the afternoon there into nightfall, playing with his cousins.
Questioned whether the boy had complained of being abused by his mother and foster father, the father of two responded in the negative. However, he recalled that when his son was just seven months old, King had thrown him through their front door at Hadfield Street, Georgetown.
“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.
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 recalled. 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 midnight we heard the child dead,” she stated. 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.”
She too believes that King could not have done it alone, saying that with her being eight months pregnant, it would have been difficult for her to strangle the little boy.