Court to request psychiatric evaluation for mother accused of throwing daughter off roof
Published:Friday | May 3, 2024 | 12:13 AMChristopher Thomas/Gleaner Writer
WESTERN BUREAU:
THE ST JAMES Parish Court is expected to issue a request for Shamoya Green, the St James woman accused of fatally throwing her five-month-old daughter off a three-storey roof in December 2023, to get psychiatric treatment at the hospital where she is currently receiving physical treatment.
Presiding parish judge Natiesha Fairclough-Hylton set the case for mention on May 16 to facilitate an update into that pending request, after being informed that Green, who was absent from court because of being at the Falmouth Public Hospital in Trelawny for undisclosed physical injuries, is expected to be committed for psychiatric evaluation on July 3.
“If Ms Green is in the hospital for a physical ailment, what is the difficulty in assessing her for a mental ailment at the same time? She is already in the hospital. If you are already in the hospital for your physical ailment, what is so hard in assessing you for your mental ailment as well?” Judge Fairclough-Hylton demanded to know, repeating a similar concern she had previously raised on April 4 in regard to the delay in getting Green assessed.
“What I’ll do, in the interim, I’ll set a date for us to make contact with the psychiatric department to advise them that she’s already hospitalised, so if they could make some allowances to see her, we would be grateful. I’ll set it for May 16, 2024, so that a contact can be made with the hospital to see if the accused can be seen by a psychiatric doctor there at Falmouth Hospital,” Fairclough-Hylton continued.
The judge had previously voiced displeasure that Green, who is charged with murder in relation to the death of her infant daughter Destiny Brown, had not undergone an evaluation since December, despite being a patient at the psychiatric unit of the Cornwall Regional Hospital in St James.
It should be noted that, during Green’s two previous in-person court appearances on March 6 and April 4, she exhibited open signs of mental disturbance, to include claiming to hear the voices of her children, including the deceased baby Destiny, and trying to climb atop the railing of the prisoner’s dock.
She had also suffered an epileptic episode on March 6, necessitating the intervention of police officers and onlookers.
In the meantime, Fairclough-Hylton suggested that persons who go to the hospital for physical injuries should also be mentally assessed during that visit, if they have a history of mental illness.
“When an individual goes to the hospital, say with a broken hand or foot, if that individual has a mental disorder that is going to manifest itself at some point or another during the course of the person being hospitalised, then, when it manifests itself, I would think that immediately the nurses there would alert the nurses or doctors who specialise in that ailment so that they can come and do an assessment. That is what I would think,” Fairclough-Hylton remarked.
Allegations are that, on December 6, 2023, at about 5:35 p.m., Green was at home with her common-law husband and other family members when she tried to have a conversation with the man about their relationship. However, he put off the talks to later that evening.
Green reportedly became enraged and left the room, taking baby Destiny with her. She then took the child to the roof of the third floor of the family’s house and threw her onto the concrete pit in the yard.
The police were alerted and Destiny was taken to the hospital, where she died while being treated.