Murdered teen’s mother, now jobless, faces funeral expense - HELP ME BURY MY SON

GREGORY MCBURNIE

RIMA Hosein, mother of Mikiel Hosein, whose headless corpse was found in Chaguanas, says she needs help to pay for her son’s burial.

Mikiel, 19, was last seen on October 31, almost nine weeks after his brother Matthew, 17, went missing.

Mikiel’s body was found in a bushy area near Woodford Lodge in Chaguanas on November 10.

Hosein identified him on Monday at a funeral home in Chaguanas.

She said though his body was badly decomposed, she was able to identify him through a tattoo on his arm.

Hosein cried as she recounted how Mikiel promised her he would never stop searching for his brother.

She said with one son still missing and the other now confirmed dead, she had chosen to see the less painful side of the ordeal.

“I must say thank God for the 19 years I had with him.

“I know him as a good boy. He loves to help people and he is very friendly to everybody.

“He was loved by his entire family, but he and his brother were very close, and he said, ‘Mommy, I don’t care if I have to get my death, I want to find what happened to my brother.’ Look what has happened now.

“But I pray to God I get justice for this and God will deal with whoever do this.”

Hosein said the ordeal had also helped her to see there were still many good people in TT.

“I must say thanks to the nation and to everyone who has been praying for me, because it is prayers that have me standing today, and it is what kept me going. That is why I have been so strong and had faith.

“So to everybody who prayed for me and my sons, I want to thank you all so much.”

She said she was worried about finding money to bury her son, as she was fired from her job as a private geriatric nurse.

Hosein said her employer expressed concern over the possibility that the people behind her sons’ disappearance might target her while she was at work.

Asked what she would say to National Security Minister Fitzgerald Hinds if she had the opportunity, Hosein said she would ask only for assistance to pay for her son’s burial.

“I’m looking for help right now to at least get another job. I mean, imagine, I can’t bury my own child. He wasn’t paying any NIS or anything.”

That would have made it possible to access a funeral grant to cover some of the costs.

“So I’m pleading for some kind of help or some kind of assistance from them. It’ll be kindly appreciated.”

Hosein said she had chosen to ignore comments on social media suggesting the brothers were involved in a gang and that might have had something to do with their disappearance.

“Some people in my village are calling me all sorts of things and not talking to me like I am a criminal. You can’t stop Trinidadians from talking, because they will have all kind of things to say.

“They had nothing to say about them before, so why are they now saying things behind their back? I read the comments and I just say, look, I’m not taking on that. I know my child.”

She said while Mikiel had a criminal record, Matthew was always on the “straight and narrow.”

“Yes, Mikiel had pending matters before the court for robbery, but he changed from that, and he was working. He only stopped working when his brother went missing.

“Matthew had no pending matters. He went to school and got all of his subjects and even got awards.”

She added, “Mikiel started straying since secondary school. He got expelled and started to do a lot of wrong things. He even ended up in St Ann’s hospital.

“He went through a real hard time, a tumultuous childhood. He is a child with a lot of anger. He and his brother grew up with a lot of abuse, physically, emotionally, sexually – all of that, they went through it. So it was eating them from the inside.

“Matthew even wrote a suicide letter and he said he had no idea how to escape from this. So it was in their mind.

“I had them get counselling through family services and I tried to nurture them. I tried to give them as much as I could.

“Mikiel started to get aggressive with his stepfather, so he went to live with his father, but they started to have disagreements.

“Mikiel has a high temper, but I don’t believe anything that people saying that they were in this gang thing.”

Hosein said Mikiel’s autopsy could not determine the cause of his death as his body was too decomposed.

She said she still had hope that her other son was alive and had not met the same fate.

Asked what she would say to him if he were alive, Hosein begged for him to return home safely.

“Wherever you are, son, I hope you just come back home. Your brother was trying to find you and he died doing it, so please come back home. I love you, Papa.”

Anyone interested in helping Rima Hosein can contact her at 292-6780.