A Beetham woman is mourning the loss of her six-week-old premature baby who was pronounced dead after being taken to hospital on Thursday morning.

Shortly after 10 am on Thursday, Akisha Bains and Jerome Williams took their son Jerel Bains to the neonatal intensive care unit (NICU) at the Port of Spain General Hospital (PoSGH).

Jerel was unresponsive and doctors tried to resuscitate him but were unsuccessful.

The doctors saw bruises on his chest area and at around 7 pm that day, reported the baby’s death to the police.

Baby Jerel spent one month in hospital after he was born on May 4 and had been home with his family for two weeks.

He was sleeping next to his two other siblings and his mother at their Main Street, Beetham Gardens, home on Thursday at around 4am when relatives heard someone call out to Williams.

They told the person he wasn’t home and only then did the person announce themselves as police.

Relatives say police told them they had a warrant for Williams arrest for outstanding child-maintenance payments and then accused them of lying about his whereabouts.

Relatives continued to maintain he was not at home but said police jumped the wall and entered the yard.

“I look out the window and see one of them lean up against the wall and another stand on his shoulder and jump over and unlock the gate for the rest of them,” Williams’s sister said.

Relatives said they told the police there were children in the house who were sleeping but said police accused them of trying to “cover” for Williams.

Bains had just finished feeding Jerel and putting him back to sleep as she was trying to maintain the feeding schedule he had at the hospital.

She was still awake and went outside to see what the commotion was about.

By then, relatives said police had entered the house and began searching for Williams.

Williams’s sister stood by the bedroom door as an officer searched the room in which Jerel was sleeping.

[caption id="attachment_1090028" align="alignnone" width="683"] Akisha Bains -[/caption]

The police left around 5 am and Bains said she went back to sleep.

She awoke a few hours later and got her older son ready and walked him to school.

Upon returning home, she tried to wake Jerel to feed him but he was unresponsive.

His limbs felt cold and when Bains saw dried blood near his nose, she raised an alarm.

She said Williams tried to perform CPR on the baby on the way to the hospital but doctors said he was dead by the time they arrived.

Bains said the CPR caused the bruises on the baby’s chest.

She said she was distraught as her son, although premature, was perfectly healthy before he died.

“He went for his check-up just last Friday and he was fine and there were no issues. He was putting on weight and everything was good. I had no sign to say that something was going wrong with him.”

She said she hoped for answers in her baby’s death but said she was told she would have to wait up to six weeks for the autopsy results.

Bains said, in the meantime, the family intended to