RAD­HI­CA DE SIL­VA

Op­po­si­tion Leader Pen­ne­lope Beck­les and La Brea MP Clyde El­der put aside pol­i­tics on Sat­ur­day evening as they joined hun­dreds of Los Iros res­i­dents in a can­dle­light march call­ing for greater pro­tec­tion of Trinidad and To­ba­go’s chil­dren, fol­low­ing the killing of 12-year-old Mer­cedes Layne, a stu­dent at the Erin RC Pri­ma­ry School, whose bat­tered body was dis­cov­ered last Sun­day near an oil pipeline.

Ad­dress­ing mourn­ers and res­i­dents gath­ered in the south­west­ern vil­lage, Beck­les said the coun­try’s es­ca­lat­ing vi­o­lence against chil­dren de­mand­ed a unit­ed na­tion­al re­sponse.