By Carlena Knight
There seems to a bit of a conflict between the police and Jahhym Azzo, the victim of a fight that left him fighting for his life.
The conflict has to do with the number of boys involved in the incident.
The Police Public Relations Officer, Frankie Thomas, told our newsroom yesterday that he had spoken to the investigator directly and nowhere was there any indications that there were more than two minors involved in the matter.
These are the minors according to Thomas who have been charged with wounding with intent to murder.
In fact, Thomas went a step further to accuse OBSERVER media of misinforming the public when we reported that five boys were involved in the vicious fight.
Jahhym was admitted to the Mount St John’s Medical Centre (MSJMC) on September 5 suffering from bleeding on his brain, a fractured nose and jaw resulting in all his bottom teeth being knocked out.
When he was admitted, doctors gave him a 50 percent chance of survival because of his critical state.
Three doctors had to fly in from Trinidad and Tobago to perform facial reconstruction surgery and other operations on the 17 year old, who was unresponsive and on life support in the hospital’s Intensive Care Unit (ICU) at the time.
But Azzo, who earlier this week defied the odds and pulled through, spoke in his first interview since the fight and claimed that it was indeed five boys.
“It was five of them, at first. I was walking going home and they approached me. I saw the five of them; I wasn’t knocked out yet. One of them used to work with me so I actually know him very well.”
Meanwhile, Azzo’s grandmother, Clayanther Shaw, aired her frustration over what she considers the slow progress of the police in arresting and charging the other three boys.
She went even further to accuse the police of attempting to protect the other boys.
“Five of them, they are hiding the other three, and if they don’t want us to find the other three for them, because we can find the other three when my grandson can show me the other three. It’s five of them from school. They sent in the younger two to take the rap so those three big ones are outside and they send in the two small ones because they are trying to say that they are underage, so this is how they put the pressure to let them take the rap. How can you send in those two juveniles; what about the others?
“The other three are the boss for the gang you know, so this is how they doing it.
“We have an eyewitness who saw the attack and said it was five too. Can you imagine our witness have five, my grandson have five…From time he awoke and we talk to him in the ICU he told us is five and they are hiding. He knows it’s five and I am saying that they know all these things and they are trying to send in these two smaller younger ones. Why?”
She also questioned the morals of the alleged perpetrators themselves and she cannot understand why this situation occurred with members from the same community.
“I can’t believe people are hitting their own villagers. Why should you be damaging your own villagers? They not living so far from each other; big and old walk that same road so I can’t see why the attack is there. I am really angry.”
Shaw explained that this entire situation is weighing heavily on the family, but affects her grandson the most. His present condition, Shaw explains, is also having a negative effect.
“Sometimes he would just sit and [gaze off] and I am really upset because what we have to do, we are going through a lot that we have to find. He cannot eat hard food. He has to eat soup, he has to drink Supligen, he has to be using juices. He cannot eat and so, and these are the things the little boy has to be using and it’s so hard.”