MONTEGO BAY, St James — The police have said that 25-year-old Roosevelt “’Timmy” Thomas confessed to killing his three-year-old daughter Leashay, by drowning her at sea last Tuesday night.

“I don’t even love to talk about such a despicable act,” a senior cop told the

Jamaica Observer yesterday.

“How can a person kill his own baby. But that is what is happening here in St James.”

The highly placed cop, however, made it clear that the police were still awaiting the results of an autopsy to determine the official cause of the infant’s death.

The body of the 25-year-old father was found in a section of the inner-city of Glendevon, shortly after he escaped police custody Thursday night.

Police reported that Thomas’s body was found in an abandoned house about 9:00 pm.

Leashay was reportedly taken from her mother’s home in Flower Hill, St James, by Thomas, following a dispute with the child’s mother on Monday night. Police reported that they received a call from a family member who said a man purporting to be Thomas called to say he was going to commit suicide as he had killed his daughter and had thrown her body into the sea at Closed Harbour Beach, popularly called Dump Up Beach, in Montego Bay.

Police went to the scene the same night, but returned to their base after coming up empty-handed following a search of the area. They returned to the location Tuesday morning, where they spotted the body of a child, which they fished from the sea. It was later identified as Leashay’s.

The police launched a search for the father, who subsequently reported to the Savanna-la-Mar Police Station in Westmoreland, in the company of a clergyman, and was later transferred to the Barnett Street station in St James, because the crime had been committed in that parish.

The accused, who the police disclosed confessed to the crime, jumped through a window and escaped while he was being questioned by detectives.

Information reaching the

Sunday Observer are that Thomas was said to be a player in the lotto scam and it is being argued in some quarters that residents in St James involved in the illegal sweepstakes are engaging in demonic rituals, such as killing their family members as a sacrifice, in order not to be caught.

Director of Public Prosecutions Paula Llewellyn gave her view on the issue.

“I believe that faith can move mountains and no demonic forces can stand against faith in God,” Llewellyn told a group of Justices of the Peace in Clark’s Town, Trelawny.

She questioned whether the community could have intervened to prevent the killing of the little girl.

“Now, as far as I am concerned, we will have due process. But I thought to myself, could this action at all have been prevented by the community had members been more on the alert? Were there issues going on, whether in that home, the community, that perhaps if there had been some intervention, proactively it may have prevented it?”