Bizarre link with Akiel's murder

In a bizarre coincidence yesterday as a 12-year-old boy was being buried in New Grant, a 57- year-old woman was in the Intensive Care Unit at the San Fernando General Hospital fighting for life after her leg was sliced off in a car accident.

The link between the two is bizarre indeed.

The boy, Dane Andrews, of Hindustan Village, New Grant, was believed to have been buggered and murdered on Wednesday last week. He had gone after school with friends to swim in a pool in New Grant. He never returned home. After an all night search his body was found in the pond, his clothes, including his underwear scattered at the edge of the pool.

An autopsy gave cause of death as drowning, but also revealed that Dane had been the victim of sexual abuse.

The woman in hospital is Annalore James at whose swimming pool in Haleland Park, Maraval, the body of 11-year-old Akiel Chambers was found in May 1998. Akiel had gone there to a birthday party for a classmate and disappeared. The next morning his body was found at the bottom of the pool. The autopsy revealed he had been buggered and sexually abused.

James was driving on the Solomon Hochoy Highway on Sunday when she saw a car slam into one of the concrete pillars on the highway. She stopped to assist the driver, Wendell Deheart, 40, who was trapped inside the car bleeding profusely. As James was trying to pull him out of the vehicle, another car driven by Clyde Ramsir, 36, crashed into James. Her right leg was almost completely severed and she sustained a broken right arm. James was rushed to the San Fernando General Hospital where doctors amputated her leg. Yesterday her husband, well-known businessman and horse owner, Charles James, told Newsday that he was attending a function when his daughter Shantal, 28, told him what had happened.

Charles said, "Doctors tried to save the leg, but they were left with no choice. It was either her life or her leg. Her blood count went to zero."

Yesterday as the pearl white coffin bearing Dane's body was taken to his home for the last time, his mother Avril Andrews screamed for justice and his grandmother warned: "This is not passing like Akiel, you know! There is a God, and time will tell."

His aunt Shelly Ann Fortune called for Dane to speak to her. A cousin Jason Fortune, sobbed: "Oh God, please help. I want to know who did this to Dane!" His grandmother then placed a bag of snacks on the coffin. "I know you can't eat it, but take it anyway. You always loved snacks. Take it!"

Dane was laid to rest at the New Grant Cemetery following a service at the Mount Nebo Spiritual Baptist Church.

Since Akiel's death in 1998 there has been continuing outrage at the police bungling of the investigations, and of the disposal, or loss of vital evidence that would lead to the killer, or killers. The Andrews family, however, looking back on the similar circumstances of the Akiel tragedy, have sworn that Dane's death would not go unpunished like Akiel's, and the perpetrators will be brought to justice.

http://www.newsday.co.tt/stories.php?article_id=33197