Police and members of the Regiment spent close to half of yesterday searching a thickly forested area in Brasso Seco in the hopes of finding a missing family. It has been a week since Irma Rampersad disappeared along with her grandchild and two of her daughters. Yesterday the searchers began at 4.30 am, trekking through mostly uncharted parts of the forest. Police, led by a “person of interest”, set off from behind the family’s Bleu Road, Brasso Seco, Paria, home with shovels, pitchforks and a cadaver dog, named Jack.
The T&T Guardian was told the digging tools were “just in case” they came across anything resembling a shallow grave. But when the searchers came out by 3.50 pm, all they had discovered was new routes in and out the forested area. One of Rampersad’s daughters, Nicole Gonzales, told the media last Friday she had last spoken with her mother on October 27, when Rampersad said she was taking Gonzales’sister, Felicia, 17, a student of the Malabar Secondary School, to the Arima Health Facility.
Checks there by relatives revealed they never made it. Gonzales added that her sister, Jenelle, 19, would also never leave home with her one-year-old child, Shania Amoroso, without packing a baby bag for her, and since all the child’s belongings were still home, she believes the family have been abducted. Following the murder of Phillip Noreiga, 31, in the area on August 4, Gonzales said her mother had been receiving threats from people who believed she had seen something and was not forthcoming with the information.
Speaking with the media at a makeshift base camp yesterday, ASP Curt Simon of the Homicide Bureau said they were seeking the assistance of a 52-year-old hunter from the area, but denied he too was missing with the family, as was reported yesterday. Simon said the search had been hampered by extremely low radio connectivity and even the police radios were not working as expected.
Simon said the search party were “like boy scouts” and wanted to be prepared for anything when he was asked about the shovel and pitchfork being taken into the forest.
He added that the search party, which included members of the Homicide Bureau, North Eastern Division Task Force, Anti-Kidnapping Squad, K-9 Unit, Regiment and the Blanchisseuse police, were “prepared for the worst, while hoping for the best.” Simon said there were several rumours surrounding the disappearance of the family but the police were not concerned about that. He would not give an indication as to when the search for the missing family would become a search for their bodies, although he admitted: “We are more concerned as each hour passes.”
