Residents of Goffe Way in Denham Town, west Kingston, are angry with the police over what they say was a failure to protect a two-year-old girl they claim was left by her mother to die.

Nineteen-year-old Nicolette Ledford was yesterday detained under the Child Care and Protection Act after she allegedly abandoned her daughter in an old animal shelter off Spanish Town Road in Kingston.

Superintendent Delroy Hewitt, head of the West Kingston Police Division, said they would seek legal advice from the director of public prosecutions before laying charges.

Two years of abuse

Ledford's neighbours are pointing to what they claim were two years of abuse of the child and one bad decision by the police which thwarted their efforts to save the baby born with a physical deformity.

"We see the little baby girl naked and eating her own filth and we take her to the Denham Town Police Station, but the police returned her to her grandmother who took her back home," a livid neighbour, Erica Swaby, told The Gleaner.

However, an officer at the Denham Town Police Station defended the action of the police.

"We returned the child to the grandmother because we found her to be a fit and proper person to take care of the child," the officer said.

Efforts to contact Nicolette's mother were unsuccessful as she was said to be at work.

The residents of Goffe Way were not sure if their neighbour was at home, but they were adamant that the entire family, including the grandmother, should shoulder the blame for endangering the life of the two-year-old.

In nearby Trench Town, residents who assisted the firefighters in their search for the child on Friday night were equally upset and bewildered by the action of the 19-year-old whom they considered as a "bright (intelligent)" girl who attended Denham Town High School.

Ledford was held by the police at a friend's house, also in Denham Town, as she prepared her hair to attend the popular dancehall stage show Sting last Friday night. The man who gave her the tickets is still in shock.

"Mi get the pass them fi go Sting but true me change me mind, me give her and me see say something wrong but when me ask her, she say she cool," the popular videographer told The Gleaner.