KINGSTOWN, St Vincent (CMC) — Police in St Vincent are investigating the death of a six-month-old baby who is alleged to have been thrown out of an apartment building by a relative with a history of mental illness.

The child’s mother found him motionless on the concrete pavement on the ground level of the three- storey apartment building in which they live in Belair.

The child, his mother and the female relative live on the first floor of the building.

A senior police officer told the Caribbean Media Corporation (CMC) that the police are probing reports that the child’s mother left him in his room as she went to prepare a meal for him.

While in the kitchen, she heard the child scream and when she returned, she did not meet him where she had left him a few minutes earlier. The other female was also not in her room.

A video circulating on social media shows the child lying motionless on the concrete yard of the house with a woman, who is said to be his mother, screaming inconsolable.

Police are treating the death as a homicide, bringing to 16 the number of murders in the country this year.