The mother of three-year-old Maria Khan said she last saw her alive playing with a toy car in her bedroom on Monday afternoon.

A distraught Mary Mahabir, 22, told Newsday she went to the bathroom and left her daughter – her only child – alone to play. She checked when she was finished, but the girl was not there.

When Mahabir looked outside, she saw her daughter’s motionless body in the pool.

The soft-spoken Mahabir said she ran and grabbed the child.

"I carried her inside and started to do CPR.

"My phone was on the cupboard near where I was kneeling. I grabbed it and called 999. I was trying my best to call my grandmother (Karen Mahabir), because she was upstairs," Mahabir told Newsday on Tuesday by phone.

"It seems she was not hearing, and the guy on the other end of the line told me to focus on the baby. He said the ambulance was on its way. I told him to put the siren on when it reaches by the house so that my grandmother would hear it."

Maria was later declared dead at the San Fernando General Hospital.

Mahabir and her daughter lived with Mahabir's grandparents and uncle in a two-storey house in Gasparillo. The small pool is in the family's front yard.

On Monday night, police visited the house and took a statement from Mahabir.

She has since been staying at a friend’s home.

On Tuesday, she went to the Forensic Sciences Centre in St James. The police told her a covid19 test has to be done before the autopsy.

Gasparillo police are investigating.

Maria’s father, Roger Khan, 23, was shot dead in January 2020 at his home at Ecclesville in Rio Claro. Gunmen passed relatives in the house and shot him while he was asleep.

No one has been arrested for Khan’s killing, and Homicide Bureau Region II are investigating.

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