Five months have passed since Eon Shurland was reunited with his grandmother, Katie after being missing for about 40 days; his mother is yet to be found and the Childcare and Protection Agency will review his case in another six months.
According to a CPA official, the nine-year-old still remains in the care of the agency since his grandparents are financially unable to care for him. Stabroek News was told that Eon’s grandparents visit him regularly.
He is now attending school and “he is happy and more open,” the official said.
According to the official, officers went back to the Kuru Kururu area at least three times looking for the mother but could not find her. From all appearances this newspaper was told, the woman who has two children younger than Shurland “doesn’t want to be found”.
Meanwhile, the agency will “review his placement” in another six months, to find a more permanent plan for the child. The official explained that during this review it will be decided if he will be placed in foster care or with relatives.
Shurland went missing from his Kuru Kururu home on April 27 just shy of his ninth birthday and was subsequently found wandering in the compound of the Diamond Diagnostic Centre, East Bank Demerara. Two days later, he was handed over to the agency after a concerned guard took him to see a doctor at the institution.
The child who had suffered some sort of traumatic event was very withdrawn and only revealed his first name to probation officers. It was after a publication in the Stabroek News in which his grandmother expressed fear that he had been killed, that Shurland’s identity was revealed and he was later reunited with the elderly woman who had cared for him when he was much younger.
Because of her ill health and financial situation she was unable to care for him and made the decision to send him to live with his mother. She and her husband would occasionally visit the child and take items for him. After having a strange dream one night she telephoned the child’s mother only to be told that he had gone to spend the day at a friend in the area but never returned.
After the mother did little to find the child, Katie went with police to the area and conducted a search but nothing was found. However, later, a teen who did not want to come forward to the police, told the elderly woman that he had witnessed a woman beating the child.
