WITH tears streaming down her face, but still managing to maintain her composure, Shemelia Roberts said yesterday she can now have peace.
She however said the verdict of guilty against her husband, Anton Haisley Bruce, was received with mixed feelings.
Roberts, 24, told the Express that she was now able to have closure but was still saddened by Bruce’s fate.
’I am relieved that I could finally put my daughter to rest,’ Roberts. ’But I feel sad because he is also the father of my five-year-old son, Solomon. What is going to happen to my son now? He will have to grow up knowing that his biological father did something like this.’
Roberts was four months pregnant when Bruce, now 23, beat Kareema to death on April 8, 2004 at their home at Paradise Avenue, McBean, Couva. Kareema was pronounced dead within five minutes of arriving at the Couva Health Facility around 1.30 p.m.
Testifying for the State, Roberts relived the last time she saw her daughter alive.
She said the last thing she did was kiss Kareema before leaving for work as a processor at National Fisheries in Port of Spain.
On that day, Kareema and Roberts’s siblings, eight-year-old Jerkisha and five-year-old Jiel, were left in Bruce’s care.
She told Bruce’s attorney, Carol Foderingham, that Bruce had a good relationship with Kareema and she had no reservations about leaving the child with him.
When Bruce was released on bail, following a preliminary enquiry at which the charge was reduced to manslaughter, Roberts had an ’on and off relationship’ with him. The charge of murder was later re-instated.
Bruce had initially told police officers that he was playfully throwing Kareema in the air when she slipped from his hands and fell on the concrete floor of their home.
It was only when he was confronted with the results of the post mortem examination, which revealed that the child’s injuries were inconsistent with a fall, that Bruce confessed to inflicting a beating on her.
Kareema would have celebrated her eighth birthday on September 25 this year.
Roberts now lives at St James and also has a two-year-old son.
