Jamaica: 4-year-old dies after being forgotten in car, teacher charged for manslaughter

Jamaica: After a series of sessions, a 63-year-old female of St Catherine, Jamaica, has been charged with manslaughter in relation to the untimely death of a 4-year-old child who was left in a vehicle outside a school in Kingston in February 2022.

According to the information, the suspect is Lurline Naylor who is a retiree of Innswood Parkway, St Catherine.

It is reported that Naylor transported the 4-year-old and a few other children to school, and on February 24, 2022, she exited the vehicle with other children and accidentally forgot the child inside.

This incident claimed the life of four-year-old Jordan Clarke, who was a student at Destowe Bennette Basic School.

The female returned to her vehicle around 3 pm in the afternoon and found the child in a motionless manner, following which she rushed him to the Bustamante Hospital for Children, but the medical officials pronounced him dead. It was said that the child died from suffocation inside the car.

The child’s grandmother, Paula Downer, said that she usually walked with her grandson to school but she took the offer from the boy’s teacher to pick him up on the way as she usually did this for several other children. Downer said that she was not aware that this deal would take up life of her grandchild.

The accused was officially charged after a final question and answer series on Monday with the St Andrew Parish Court in Jamaica granting her bail in the sum of $35,000 with conditions on Tuesday. 

The negligence of the female made a family suffer and snatched a son from his family. The incident provoked anger among netizens, with several of them saying that people should not work once they are old. 

“This is sad all around. As people get older, they experience cognitive decline; she probably just honestly forgot she left him in there, and what a tough way to go for the little boy,” wrote a user named Rda Manderson.
 
Another user named Autumn called the incident very ‘sad’ and added, “Such a sad situation because she was just helping out and look what happened.”