Police have intensified their search for six-year-old Keyana Cumberbatch who went missing at Maloney Gardens, D’Abadie, on Monday afternoon after she left home to visit her grandmother who lives nearby. Contacted yesterday, police said nothing new was unearthed in connection with the child’s disappearance.
“It is painful to know that anyone is missing. I am sure that the Ministry of National Security and the protective forces will do everything they can to bring her home safely,” said Prime Minister Kamla Persad-Bissessar yesterday at an event in Penal. Cumberbatch’s mother Simone Williams told the media that her child was last seen with a male relative while on her way to her grandmother’s home at Building 17, Maloney Gardens, just across the road from her Building 4 apartment.
Williams said her daughter had done what she normally does: Get home from St Barbara’s Shouter Baptist Primary School, change her clothes and go to her grandmother’s house with her younger sister, three-year-old Briana Lewis. The girls were last seen talking to a male relative. Briana made it to her grandmother’s while Keyana, a second-year pupil, has not been seen since. The male relative who was last seen with the child is in police custody while another male relative is assisting police with their investigations.
Williams, who works at Club Princess, Port-of-Spain, said she was told that Keyana was not at her grandmother’s and only her sister was there. After frantic searches in the neighbourhood and calls to the male relative, the family called police at the Maloney Police Post who detained the man. Williams said she had not slept since her daughter went missing. Police from the Maloney post and officers from the Northern Division are investigating.