A mother who made some bad choices, but who also loved her children.
This was how the mother of Sarah Smith and grandmother of Smith’s children remembered her yesterday.
Smith, 34, and her two children—18-month-old Phoenix Smith and three-year-old Genuine Smith—were found dead in a decommissioned WASA tank on Wednesday afternoon in Parlatuvier, Tobago.
Autopsies will be conducted at the Scarborough Mortuary today, Smith’s mother Jacqueline Wayne told the Express yesterday.
“I come to take my grandchildren home. I did not come to collect bodies,” Wayne said.
She said she wants answers, noting that she had come to Tobago on Wednesday when she heard her daughter and grandchildren were missing.
“Of course, it should have justice. I want to know why the police tell me stop paying attention to social media and they saying they would give me all the information after the autopsies, so that is what we waiting on right now,” Wayne said.
She said her daughter made a number of bad choices, but she loved her four children.
Wayne said the father of the two children resides in Jamaica and was supposed to have Genuine come to Jamaica, but Smith refused to send him there after initially agreeing to do so.
“I would say Sarah loved her children dearly. I think she made a number of bad choices and I think it was just difficult for her. I have her two big boys and if it was up to me alone, I would have had all (four) of them,” Wayne said.
Chief Secretary Farley Augustine described the deaths of Smith and her children as painful.
“This is heartbreaking. The involvement of the toddlers makes it more painful. Hopefully the TTPS, Forensics and autopsies will be able to tell us soon what really happened in this case,” Augustine told the Express by phone.
Assistant Commissioner of Police Tobago Collis Hazel told the Express the incident has “rocked the community of Parlatuvier, Tobago…I can say at this time our investigators are working assiduously towards bringing all together as to what is responsible for this gruesome death of these three persons.”
He said no signs of foul play were observed on the bodies of Smith and her two children.