DNA tests have confirmed that a Guyanese man is the father of a baby boy abandoned at a Barbados Hospital five months ago by the Guyanese mother, who returned here the following day.
According to a report in yesterday’s Barbados Nation the five months of playing a waiting game finally came to fruition last week for the father, when he learnt that the newborn baby boy left abandoned at the Queen Elizabeth Hospital (QEH) last August was his son.
The father, who was not named, had delivered a saliva sample to Royal Barbados Police Force officials on September 8 to determine if he was in fact the father. But the prospective father’s attorney Samuel Legay decided it would be more expedient to have an independent laboratory in Barbados conduct the DNA tests to prove the child’s paternity, according to the report.
Results of that independent test came back last week, proving the Guyanese man is the father of the child, who is now almost six months old, and in the care of the Child Care Board, having initially spent more than two weeks under observation at the QEH after being discovered.
In an interview with the WEEKEND NATION, Legay said his client would be taking immediate steps to have his son taken out of state custody and placed with him. “This is great news. Now that he knows he is the father of the child, he’s elated. He’s overly excited to have his son come home with him for the first time. He wants it to happen very soon,” Legay was quoted by the newspaper as stating.
According to the attorney, the father is overseas, but immediately upon his return, paperwork will be completed so an official custody hearing could be held with the Child Care Board.
The child was abandoned by his mother on August 29 outside an elevator on the first floor of the QEH, near Ward C6, a few hours after birth. The 20-year-old mother left Barbados for Guyana the next day. The couple is also parents of an older boy, 18 months old, who also lives with his father in Barbados.
The father only learnt his son had been abandoned a few days after his birth, when the DAILY NATION carried a story about police requesting information from the public regarding a child being left at the hospital wrapped in a blanket. In an earlier story, the newspaper had reported that the father had said that 24 hours before the mother of the child returned to Guyana, she had told him the child had died at birth. The baby was born on August 9 at a house in St Lucy, where the couple lived. The father, who is a legal immigrant, has been living and working in Barbados for almost five years, the newspaper reported.
