Sahab Jamshidi with lawyer Alberton Richelieu in his Castries office. (Hamilton Spectator Photo).
HAMILTON SPECTATOR - On the south coast of St. Lucia this weekend, a small community is preparing to bury a four-year-old boy.
On the north end of the island, in bustling Castries, a Canadian man is slowly adjusting to his partial freedom from the holding cell where he spent six days, but still confined to the Caribbean country — stripped of his passport — after being charged with the drowning death of that child.
Almost two weeks after Terrel Joshua (TJ) Elibox drowned, conflicting stories continue to circulate the island about the circumstances leading up to his death.
The small boy’s body washed ashore Feb. 24 after he drowned in the Atlantic waters two days earlier, off Bois Shadon Beach where he and his grandmother were attending a barbecue with their church congregation.
On Thursday evening, Pastor Cornil Rudy Williams walks that same stretch of beach, showing a Hamilton Spectator reporter where the group had congregated.
Adults were cleaning fish while TJ built sandcastles a short distance away with a teenage girl from the church before tragedy struck, Williams says.
The boy’s grandmother, Marcellina Albert, says he was such “a loving baby, he would greet everybody.”
“He’d come to you and sit by you. Everybody was his friend,” Albert — dressed in all black — says Thursday, breaking into tears.
Hamilton man Sahab Jamshidi — who was on a three-week vacation in St. Lucia, visiting old friends from his university days on the island — was on the same beach that Sunday, a ways down. It was Independence Day and also his 34th birthday, and he and some friends were celebrating with their own barbecue and a kitesurfing excursion.
Four people (including TJ) in St. Lucia drowned that weekend.
Police have charged Jamshidi with gross negligence or recklessness causing death, after he allegedly took TJ out to sea on his kiteboard.
Sitting in his lawyer’s office in Castries on Friday, two days after being released from custody on $10,000 East Caribbean dollars (roughly $4,600 CDN) bail, Jamshidi is adamant this is not the case — that in years of kitesurfing he has never done such a thing.
“That’s ludicrous, no. No way. You can’t … I don’t know if it’s possible, but I wouldn’t do it. It’s straight-up dangerous.”
Kitesurfing is a sport that thrives on adrenalin, he says.
Callista Roserie shows one of her nephew TJ’s favourite toys. (Hamilton Spectator photo.)
“You don’t take a child skydiving, you know? With extreme sports, you’re worried about not losing your own life … you’ve got to be fully locked-on. You’re not going to take somebody else and be responsible for them.”
Jamshidi says he was only trying to save the boy — that the first time he laid eyes on him was when he spotted his small head bobbing in the water as he sailed by on his kiteboard. The last time was when the waves pulled the small boy under the water, away from his grasp. Jamshidi, who is a trained doctor, screamed for help.
Williams says kids on the beach “came out crying, ‘The man took the child. The surfer.’ ”
They ran down the beach, he says, where about 120 metres out they could see Jamshidi calling for help.
“We saw him during, I mean, when everything happened, he was the one in the water when he called for help, so we know that he was the person,” Williams said.
He pointed Jamshidi out to police when they arrived and said, “This is the man who had the child.”
He says Jamshidi did not take off. “As a matter of fact, he was almost the last one out of the water.”
Jamshidi says he stayed put because he wanted to help — to provide a witness statement.
“We were trying to organize a search for the kid and police pointed me out and said, ‘You were the last one who had contact with the child,’ and I said, ‘Yeah,’ and they said, ‘You know, we need to ask you some questions’ … (I said) ‘No problem.’ I was under the impression it was to, you know, answer the questions to try to solve this mystery … try to figure out what happened to this kid.”
Marcellina Albert shows a school picture of her grandson, Terrel Joshua (TJ) Elibox. (Hamilton Spectator photo.)
But the next morning, police asked him to come back in again and to bring his kite. And then they asked him to come in a third time. At that point, on the advice of a friend, he got a lawyer — Alberton Richelieu.
He was arrested and held for 72 hours — and then it was another 72 hours before he was finally charged.
Police have yet to provide Richelieu with the details of their investigation.
Williams says it’s clear the boy had to have been taken — that he was out too far a distance too quickly for a child who couldn’t swim. He also says the water was calm that day.
“The calmest beach in St. Lucia.”
Jamshidi, on the other hand, says there were whitecaps and strong winds, an ideal day for kitesurfing.
“The wind was forecasting around to be 20 knots that day … it’s usually blowing around, you know, 15 or 16 knots when the trade winds are kicking.
“I remember thinking, ‘It’d be so nice if I could stay for an extra day.’ And boy, they say ‘be careful what you wish for,’ and now I really understand what they mean by this,” Jamshidi said solemnly.
He returns to court April 24 for a “sufficiency hearing,” where his lawyer strongly believes he will be acquitted
While he awaits the details of the case against him, TJ’s family and church community — an hour’s drive down the island — await the burial of their baby.
His aunt, Callista Roserie, is trying to remember the good from the small boy’s too-short life.
Her favourite memory is from his second birthday party. She had bought him a bicycle and a chocolate cake — his favourite.
She put two candles on the cake but he insisted they use all 12 from the package.
After TJ made his toddler’s wish and blew out the candles, he turned to her.
“He said, ‘Auntie, I want to do it again. Light it again.’ ”
And he blew it out again.