To­day should have been a day of ex­cite­ment for 12-year-old Mer­cedez Layne and her school­mates on a trip to the Mt St Bene­dict Monastery in St Au­gus­tine. In­stead, her class­mates and teach­ers will join her fam­i­ly in mourn­ing her death af­ter the miss­ing Erin school­girl was found dead near an oil well yes­ter­day morn­ing, in an­oth­er trag­ic case of vi­o­lence against a child that has out­raged the coun­try.

A fran­tic search for the Stan­dard Four St Fran­cis Erin RC Pri­ma­ry School stu­dent end­ed in hor­ror yes­ter­day, when her par­tial­ly nude body was dis­cov­ered off Cara­pal Road, Erin.

Mean­while, the T&T Po­lice Ser­vice (TTPS) last night re­vealed that a sus­pect was in cus­tody in con­nec­tion with the child’s killing.