DEAF DAD WANTS BACK HIS BABY – Mute man says his child and fiancée were taken away
Kevin Grant, a Kingston man who is mute and hearing-impaired, is calling on the State to help get back his fiancée and his six-week-old daughter after they were snatched away from him last month. Grant, 43, told THE STAR, through sign language performed by his nine-year-old adopted son, Ajani Chambers, and a family friend, that on the night of October 8, someone with close ties to his fiancée took the woman and child away. He said that he went to the Olympic Way Police Station to file a report about the matter, but his inability to communicate verbally with the officers caused his statement not to be logged in the station diary. When THE STAR contacted the station, a senior cop said that he recalled seeing Grant and Chambers at the station. But after leafing through the diary several times, he was not able to find Grant’s report.
“I remember seeing the boy and him here, but I was not the one who took the report,” the cop said. “He can read and write, but it is not like he can do it well, so that’s maybe why a written statement wasn’t taken from him.”
Grant, who was still fuming about the incident when he visited The Gleaner’s office earlier this week, told THE STAR through writing that: “I want my baby and my babymother back.”
“The police at Olympic Way say that them can’t help me because me deaf,” he continued in the note.
CONFIDENT PERSON
According to Grant, he and the mother of his child were planning to get married the week after the incident occurred. “She was a good woman. She cook and wash for me,” Grant, who works as an ackee packer in a factory, wrote.
Grant’s mother, who asked not to be named, said she believes that the reason why her son’s fiancée was taken away from him is probably because he is disabled.
“It’s two disabled people, so they might believe that they can’t take care of the baby,” Grant’s mother said.
But Grant believes that he is capable of taking care of his fiancée and their young child, not only because he is a confident person, but also because the State instilled that faith in him when he was made the legal guardian of Chambers in 2008.
Chambers’ mother and Grant were in a relationship, and when Chambers’ mother fell ill and declared that she was no longer capable of taking care of her son, the State gave Grant full custody.
Chambers, who has literally become the voice through which his adopted father now speaks, said that he is ready for his little sister and his stepmom to come back home.