BY JAMIE MALERNEE
South Florida Sun-Sentinel
FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla. – (KRT) – The first of five boys gone missing in the Bahamas may have died in a swimming pool accident that his friends tried to cover up, according to the mother of a 13-year-old who says her child admitted involvement in the incident while in police custody.
But another mother, who says her son also has been detained, protests that police are intimidating the children into confessing things they didn't do. And the family of the first missing boy says they don't believe the accusations.
Freeport police on Tuesday refused to comment on the investigation into the disappearances of five boys missing since May. Gregory Christie, Northern Bahamas deputy director of the government-run Bahamas Information Services, said police would only comment that the persons who have been arrested are not being mistreated and have not yet been charged.
Authorities spent Tuesday combing through a wooded area next to an apartment complex where one mother says the accident occurred. Law enforcement used cadaver dogs from Florida and the help of U.S. officers, but released no details about what they found.
According to one mother, police picked up her boy for questioning on Sunday. He told police he and three other friends, including Jake Grant, the first boy to go missing, were swimming when Jake swam to the bottom of the pool.
"Jake's hand got stuck in the pool. They take the body out of the pool and put him on the ground and water is coming out of his nose. Then the two other boys dragged him into the bush. He was still alive," the woman said her son told police while she sat with him during questioning.
The boys left him there in the wooded area by a fence, she said, shaking her head.
"(My son) didn't tell anyone at all. He said he was afraid he'd get locked up," the woman said, worrying her boy will now be charged. "Every time I call him (in jail) he's crying. He says they keep cursing at him."
She said she does not know what happened to the other four missing boys, but said she hoped the cases were not related.
The strangeness of the alleged accident, and how it could possibly be connected to the other disappearances, has others thinking it is another false lead in a case that has been filled with bogus rumors.
Another mother who says her 12-year-old son and 19-year-old nephew are being held by police, says authorities have accused her son of trying to cover up the swimming pool accident, her nephew of kidnapping, and at one point accused the mother of child abduction and withholding information. She lives at the housing complex near where police are searching. The complex has a pool in the center of its courtyard, surrounded by units with windows. She says police are so desperate they are willing to believe any rumor.
"How could someone not hear" if there were a near drowning? she asked. "A nurse live here, a police (officer) live here. You go to them and you get help. You don't kill someone for an accident," she said.
The woman said law enforcement officers are arresting children and badgering them until they admit to something they have not done. Through tears, she said she wants her son released.
"He said, `Mommy, I don't know where Jake is, and every time I tell them I don't know where Jake is, they call me a liar,' " she said. She adds that police took her son to the crime scene Monday to point out where they left the body. But because her son is innocent, she said, he could not help them and so remains detained without charges.
Nicole Grant, Jake's 20-year-old sister, is confused. She said police have recently told her mom to "prepare for the worst," after months of saying there was every reason to hope Jake was alive. She is angry about the lack of further information.
"Even if they just go to the families and say, `We found something but we're not sure,' " she said. "Give us something to prepare."
One mother said she has tried to get a lawyer but was told by one attorney that the case was "too sensitive." The mother of the third boy to be detained says the accusations don't make sense. Her son, 11, can't swim and wouldn't be able to pull any drowning person out of the water.
"I'm just waiting now. They say they haven't charged him. So why do they have him in a cell?" she pleaded.
Added her friend, "What gives (the police) the right to hold a little child so long? He's been there since Sunday. What about the law?"
In the Bahamas, authorities can detain a person for four days, and then get another four-day extension from the courts, without having to charge them with anything.
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οΎ© 2003 South Florida Sun-Sentinel.
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