ROCK, Trelawny — The baby initially saved by doctors at the Falmouth Hospital shortly after her pregnant mother was brutally murdered at her home two weeks ago – died in the Cornwall Regional Hospital Friday night.

On Friday, June 6, the infant’s mother, 26-year-old hotel worker Raymonde Alexis-Brissett, a Haitian national who was due to give birth next month, was beaten to death with a piece of steel, allegedly by one of her male compatriots.

Following the bizarre attack, Brissett was rushed to the Falmouth Hospital where she died and the unborn baby removed from the body by personnel at the medical facility.

Alexis-Brissett, who has been married to cruise ship worker Lamar Brissett for the past seven years, has been among a small group of Haitians living a quiet life in a small section of the Rock community for over eight years.

Yesterday, the grieving widower and father of the baby, named Elizabeth Raymonde Brissett, described her death as a crushing blow. He expressed that he was clinging to the hope of his daughter’s survival as a legacy of the relationship he enjoyed with her mother.

“I was hoping that I would have had the baby as a source of remembrance of the relationship with her mother,” Brissett bemoaned.

Meanwhile, up to late yesterday afternoon the man who was arrested in connection with Alexis-Brissett’s murder was not yet charged.

A source close to the investigation told the Jamaica Observer that the question and answer process is being hampered by the language barrier and lamented the need for an interpretor.

The suspect is said to have acquired Dominican Republic citizenship, having lived in that Spanish-speaking country for many years. Members of the Haitian community in Rock indicated that the suspect speaks Creole, Spanish and French.

Asked if investigators would treat the case as a double murder given the baby’s death, the Observer police source said legal advice would be sought.

But, yesterday when contacted about the issue, president of the Cornwall Bar Association Michael Erskine explained that under Jamaican laws it would not be considered a double murder.

“The person would be charged for the mother of the child and not the child as is done in some states in America,” Erskine told the Observer.

“The foetus is not counted as an individual person until birth (under Jamaican laws).”