Police Commissioner Addresses Public Outrage Over 6-Year-Old Gabriel Orellano’s Death

Four days ago, the news of the death of 6-year-old, Gabriel Orellano went viral, stirring a blame game by many in the court of public opinion.  Questions surfaced as to how the child could have left the school compound unnoticed, and how those who saw the child wandering alone did not intervene.  Perhaps the most upsetting factor in this incident is when a police officer explained to Love News that she had notified 911 of the child being alone on the streets.  For the first time since the incident, the Police Commissioner Chester Williams did an interview with the media.  In the first instance, he spoke on the normalizing of seeing young children alone on the streets.  He also confirmed that the police officer did call 911 for help.

Chester Williams, Commissioner of Police: “It is telling on us as a society to see that the child was seen running through traffic, several vehicles almost hit him and nobody stopped to check to see who the child was, where he was going or anything. They just left him alone. It ended up in that sad way that no-one would want to see a child. We also reviewed the issue with the police officer who had given an interview to the media, I think to Love FM, stating that she had seen the child and had called the 911 and gave the information. We have checked on that and it is indeed true, she called and it showed that immediately after she called the diary entry showed that she passed the information onto the patrols that were out. The patrols went and checked, unfortunately they were not able to find him and again you can see the video the child was moving very fast. And so because of that the patrol was not able to locate the child. It’s sad. I wish it had not happened that way but I hope that there is something we all as a society can lear from what happened to that child.”

As it relates to levying charges, Commissioner Williams says it would be challenging to hold anyone accountable.  

Chester Williams, Commissioner of Police: “It is going to be extremely difficult. The end of investigation we will refer the matter to the DPP but I don’t foresee her giving such directive. At the end of the day I think even the teachers at Stella Maris are shaken up by what happened. So they’re going through their own thing right now because certainly they would not have wanted that to happen to the child. But we will see when that time comes. Well the issue we will be looking at is to see if there is any culpability in terms of negligence on the part of anybody. You would know that if you have charge of a child you have not just a moral obligation but also a legal obligation to ensure the safety of that child and once that obligation is broken by way of negligence then you can be held liable.”

Orellano was in Infant One at Stella Maris School.  He had left the school compound just before midday and wandered on the city streets, ending up in the Hangar area where he drowned.