The youngsters, ranging in age from 11 to 13, were indicted in connection with the disappearance of Jake Grant, 12, late Friday morning before Magistrate Franklyn Williams in a Freeport Juvenile Court.
It was the first solid break in the high-profile missing persons case in the last five months.
On May 9, Jake was the first to go missing. Two weeks later, two others, Mackinson Colas, 12, and DeAngelo McKenzie, 13, had disappeared. By late September, Junior Reme, 11, and Desmond Rolle, 14 had both vanished.
Despite reports linking the cases to the Winn Dixie downtown supermarket and the Play 2 D Xtreme video game room downtown, authorities say they are being treated separately.
Assistant Commissioner of Police, Ellison Greenslade, at a press briefing earlier in the week, announced that police had their “teeth in something” and yesterday said that the arrests were based on “outstanding work” by detectives and good leads from the public.
“I wish to remind you that we are treating each of the five missing cases as a distinct and separate manner,” he said at the briefing at Central Police Headquarters, carried live on local radio stations.
Meanwhile, the arraignment of the boys was underway across the road at the Garnet Levarity Justice Centre.
As the press corps made its way to the courthouse, residents and motorists assembled in the courtyard and were held back on the lawn by police and Defence Force officers dressed in army fatigues.
Within minutes, the cars lined the sides of the road and motorists making their way around the roundabout on the mall in front of the courthouse crept by hoping to get a glimpse of the boys.
As the crowd waited patiently outside, the officers, who had formed a human perimeter some 80 feet between the cell block door and the crowd, were kept busy keeping the media and others from inching forward.
“Get back, back,” the crowd was constantly instructed.
Then, an Anglican priest holding a Bible and dressed in black was escorted through the crowd and into the door.
After waiting just over an hour, it became apparent that the boys were being escorted through the green door, and hordes of onlookers and bystanders attempted to bypass the human police perimeter and push toward the bus.
The youngsters were effectively obscured from waiting cameras and the public by the surrounding officers and rushed into the bus.
Screams and other loud outbursts of “they little boys,” “my boy” and people crying out loud rang out as the police transport bus sped to the airport, from where the juveniles would be taken to the Simpson Penn Juvenile Detention Centre in Nassau.
Some among the mob chased the bus as it made its departure, while others clasped each other in their arms and cried.
One woman, screaming, “my boy, my boy,” collapsed on the sidewalk outside and had to be taken in through the cell block door.
The ambulance was also summoned to the scene and the woman was seen by the emergency medical technicians.
In the heat of the moment, family members of the boys who became riled up had to be calmed, until a heavy rainshower dispersed the crowd.
Assistant Superintendent of Police Glen Miller, in charge of the Central Detective Unit, in a subsequent media briefing declined to say whether Jake’s body was found, or why the charge was that of manslaughter.
The summary trial of the four juvenile suspects, three of whom are Haitian nationals, is set for Feb. 26, 2004.
In the meantime, the cases of Mackinson, DeAngelo, Junior and Desmond remain open, and police say they will be relentless in their pursuit in finding the children and to determine the circumstances surrounding their disappearances.
ACP Greenslade said police still need the continued support of the public in providing information that will help to conclude investigations into the boys’ disappearances.
By Lededra Ferguson, The Nassau Guardian
