PORT OF SPAIN, Trinidad (CMC) – A 28-year-old man has been sent to the psychiatric hospital for evaluation after he appeared in an Arima court, east of here on Monday, charged with the murder of a six-year-old schoolgirl, whose body was found buried beneath clothes in a barrel in her bedroom last month.

Dwayne Lewis, the stepfather of Keyana Cumberbatch, was labelled a beast, devil and evil, by an angry crowd as he made his way before Senior Magistrate Indrani Cedeno to answer the charge of murdering the schoolgirl between November 24 and 29. Some people even threatened to castrate, hang, maim, and torture the accused.

Cumberbatch’s body was found four days after she was reported missing and the autopsy results showed that she died from blunt-force trauma to the head and had been sexually assaulted.

Lewis, who had been in police custody one day after the child’s disappearance, had been hospitalised on at least two occasions suffering with asthma.

Defence attorney Fareed Ali said that his client’s “human rights” had been infringed during his time in police custody and that “the accused may have been deprived the opportunity to get legal advice” before submitting a statement to investigators.

Ali said Lewis was also not given medication prescribed by doctors to prevent a relapse and that when he went to visit his client “he was not smelling good at all”.

Ali said under Section 13 (1) of the Mental Health Act he was asking Magistrate Cedeno to send Lewis to St Ann’s for a “forensic evaluation”. The magistrate agreed and sent the accused to the hospital for 14 days to be evaluated.