MOUNTAINSIDE, St Elizabeth — The parents of 18-month-old Shaleah Dobson were just too grief-stricken to attend her funeral service on Wednesday.

The just under one-hour service, held at the Salvation Army Mountainside Corps, a small church in this district, was attended by family members and a few friends.

A private viewing preceded the service at a separate location.

A mourner told the Jamaica Observer that the heartbroken parents — both members of the Jamaica Constabulary Force (JCF) — were at a nearby house.

“I did not know what to say, so I didn’t say anything to them. The coping has been rough for the both of them. The two of them just cry every day. They are good people, dedicated to their work and they live loving,” said one woman, who identified herself as a family friend.

Shaleah’s father is a detective sergeant assigned to Black River Police Station, while the mother is a sergeant in the same St Elizabeth Division.

On January 17 the father, during a change of routine, mistakenly left his baby daughter on the back seat of his car for hours when he got to work at Black River Police Station.

In normal circumstances, Shaleah would have been cared for on a daily basis by her maternal grandmother, while her parents were at work, but a day-care arrangement was made after the grandmother fell ill.

Unaccustomed to the chore of taking the child to daycare at a location in Black River, the father, after arriving at work, drove a police service vehicle to Warminster, south-east St Elizabeth, about a 45-minute trip by road, to carry out a further probe into the case of the former Haitian Opposition Senator John Joel Joseph — one of three key suspects who was being hunted in relation to the July 2021 assassination of former Haitian President Jovenel Moise.

Joseph had been arrested by Jamaican police in Warminster on January 15, along with his wife and two children. They were taken into custody after they were found to be staying in two houses close to each other.

Initial reports are that the detective sergeant remembered that he had left the child in the vehicle hours later and immediately alerted his colleagues at the Black River station, who found the child unconscious, and took her to the nearby Black River Hospital.

Unfortunately, however, the child died on January 19.

“This was unexpected. All of this cause through him work,” said the female mourner on Wednesday.

Another family friend blamed the stressful nature of policing for the tragedy.

“They work hard. The work cause this. Dem man deh nuh stop work, enuh. The mother a the same thing. The whole a we forgetful at times,” he said. To emphasise his point, he added, “You have the thing you are looking for right in front of you and it lost, enuh, and yuh search hours for it.”

He blasted people who have made unkind and insensitive comments about the parents.

“Who woulda waan go park a Black River Police Station and kill him owna pickney?” he charged. “Is not like him come out and gone sit down. The man come out [of his car] and gone to work… Him cyaan forgive himself for that guilt weh him have, enuh. Him cyaan come to terms with it.”

A distant relative said he was still shaken up over the incident.

“Yuh haffi wonder if it really happen, enuh. That, for anybody, is punishing,” he said.

“As a family, we are cherishing the memories we got to spend with her. We all miss her. She will always be in our hearts,” another member of the family said in the remembrance.

Shaleah was interred at a family plot in Mountainside.