News of Kadeem Joseph’s death was just about the last thing his mother Sophia Arundel expected when she took a call from her sister on April 29. A man has since been charged with fatally stabbing Joseph but Arundel is far from pleased with the police.
“I spoke to Kadeem an hour before I got that call,” Arundel recalled. “Just asking him to keep his head above water. I was telling him he could come to England soon, to attend school.” She was in the U.K. at the time of the incident.
“Hanging up without saying I love you is the hardest part for me. I just said, ‘Talk to you later!’ When my sister called to tell me what had happened, her exact words were: ‘Sis, I have some bad news. Kadeem was taken from us. He is no longer with us.’ I did not believe her. I said to myself: If he were dead, I would have felt it. I had to hear it from the doctor before I could believe it. Afterwards, I sat on the bed and cried, still waiting for the doctor to tell me my sister had been mistaken. Instead, when he called it was to confirm what my sister had told me.”
A tearful Arundel added, “He died in his aunt’s arms. She told me he had been sitting on a bucket near to her house. She was inside with her door ajar. My son was waiting for his cousin. His aunt told me she heard a commotion. When she looked up she saw my son falling over on a sheet of galvanise. She only realised what had happened when Kadeem removed the scissors and she saw the blood. She grabbed a cloth and ran to Kadeem where he fell. His last words were: ‘I cannot breathe.’ She sat down, cradled him, then he died.”
Arundel was unhappy about the response of the Canaries police. “The police station is in the village. Why did it take the police twenty minutes to get to the scene of the crime? From what I was told, the ambulance from Soufriere got there before the Canaries police officers did. I was also told one of the Canaries officers was around when Kadeem was killed. He saw what happened but left.”
Arundel has also been told that the whereabouts of the murder weapon are unknown. “Had the police arrived on time they might have gotten the weapon that my son pulled out of his body and dropped on the ground. Whether someone at the scene got rid of it, I don’t know. But it disappeared. If all I’ve been told is true, then who’ll be held responsible for all of these mistakes?”
Kadeem Joseph had submitted two reports to the police about assaults by the suspected killer, the last just two days before he was fatally stabbed.
Arundel’s demands are simple enough: “I want a revamp of the police officers at the Canaries police station. It’s unfair that police officers are transferred to Canaries as punishment for offences they committed. Canaries has problems like every other Saint Lucian community. We need officers who actually work, and who don’t use the excuse of having no police vehicle for not patrolling their beat. Had they been out on the street, they might have seen something and prevented my son’s death. It is unfair that parents have to worry whenever their children step out of the house.”
