Police continuing probes into Shazade, Damari’s deaths

POLICE investigations are continuing into the deaths of Damari Jeffrey, five and Shazade “Princess” Simon, three.

DCP Curt Simon told Newsday on Thursday the investigations are still active.

He said all unnatural deaths are investigated by the police. Once completed, he said, the files will be submitted for decisions to be taken on whether or not to lay charges.

The two deaths sparked public outrage against adult relatives as well as grief.

The children died within a day of each other. They had both started school for the first time on September 4. They were buried on the same day at separate funerals in their hometowns of La Brea and Williamsville.

They both had a colour-themed send-off – blue for Damari and pink for Shazade, her favourite colour.

Damari was laid to rest at the La Brea cemetery after a service at the La Brea RC Church. Damari, of La Brea, died by drowning at Fun Splash Water Park, Debe on Republic Day. He was a first-year student of La Brea RC Primary School.

He was at a birthday party for his younger cousin at the waterpark with his mother and other relatives. During the festivities, Damari managed to move undetected from the shallow section reserved for children to the deeper adult pool.

His motionless body was first discovered by his mother, Anika George, who pulled him out. Pool attendants and later emergency medical technicians tried to revive him and he was taken to the SFGH, where he died.

Princess Shazade’s body was interred at the Whiteland Public Cemetery after a funeral at His Image Ministry Church, Williamsville. Shazade, of Morne Roche, Williamsville, died on September 25 at the San Fernando General Hospital (SFGH), where she had been warded six days earlier for burns she suffered in an incident at her grandfather’s vending stall.

She attended the Mayo Early Childhood Care and Education Centre.

Shazade, the only child of her mother, Andell Lazar, was at the vending stall of her grandfather Wendell Lazar, a short distance from her home.

Lazar was making a pot of soup on a firecracker on the floor of his stall for Shazade, his only grandchild. He had a pot of lentil peas boiling on the firecracker.

He went to wash his hands after kneading flour for the dumplings and asked his daughter Andell to pour water on his hands, as he had no running water in the stall.

In that split second, he said, it appeared Shazade followed her mother, stumbled on the pot and suffered second-degree burns to 25 per cent of her body.

She was immediately taken to hospital, where she spent six days before she died.

An autopsy done at the SFGH mortuary showed she died from deep vein thrombosis (a blood clot), right heart thromboembolism and 12 per cent mixed partial thickness burns on the total body surface area.

Her grandfather has called for an investigation into her death, saying a doctor told him she was "good" and was due to be released from the hospital two days before she died.

Videos in circulation on social media showed the very vibrant toddler singing and talking to her relatives from her hospital bed.

In one message, she told her grandfather, “Don’t cry for me, Papa.”