Mother in pain as daughter, 2 grandchildren found dead in tank

  • Sep, Thu, 2024
  • ICTS


A moth­er is mourn­ing af­ter her daugh­ter and two grand­chil­dren were found dead in­side a de­com­mis­sioned Wa­ter and Sew­er­age Au­thor­i­ty (WASA) tank in Par­latu­vi­er, To­ba­go, last night.

Po­lice of­fi­cers from the Mo­ri­ah Sta­tion dis­cov­ered the bod­ies of Sarah Smith, 33, of Par­latu­vi­er, along with her three-year-old son Gen­uine and 18-month-old daugh­ter Phoenix in the wa­ter tank, which is near their home.

The grim dis­cov­ery was made dur­ing a search op­er­a­tion in the area, which al­so in­volved mem­bers of the Hunters’ Search and Res­cue team.

The moth­er and two chil­dren were last seen in Trinidad on Au­gust 30. How­ev­er, the last time they were phys­i­cal­ly seen in To­ba­go was on Sep­tem­ber 2.

Smith’s moth­er, Jacque­line Wayne, con­tact­ed the Mo­ri­ah Po­lice Sta­tion at 7.15 pm on Tues­day (Sep­tem­ber 10) and re­port­ed her daugh­ter miss­ing.

In tears dur­ing a tele­phone in­ter­view yes­ter­day, Wayne told Guardian Me­dia, “This is a hor­ri­ble time for me. I can’t deal with noth­ing right now. I came up here to find my daugh­ter and grand­son alive, not dead. I can’t cope right now, God!”

She be­came in­con­solable and couldn’t con­tin­ue speak­ing.

Po­lice re­ports said that her rel­a­tives be­came sus­pi­cious af­ter Smith had not been an­swer­ing her phone. Her moth­er told of­fi­cers she had al­so heard that Smith was act­ing strange­ly, hear­ing things, and had been seen walk­ing naked.

Smith and her two chil­dren were said to be stay­ing in Par­latu­vi­er af­ter be­ing evict­ed from their home a week ear­li­er. Po­lice ini­tial­ly searched her last known ad­dress but couldn’t find her.

It wasn’t un­til 5 pm yes­ter­day that of­fi­cers no­ticed a foul smell com­ing from a near­by area. This led them to an emp­ty 40-foot tank, where they found the bod­ies.

Au­thor­i­ties, in­clud­ing from WASA, the To­ba­go Emer­gency Man­age­ment Agency and the fire ser­vice, were called to as­sist with re­cov­er­ing the bod­ies af­ter the dis­cov­ery. In­ves­ti­ga­tions are on­go­ing and a post-mortem ex­am­i­na­tion is ex­pect­ed to be con­duct­ed at the Scar­bor­ough Gen­er­al Hos­pi­tal Mor­tu­ary.

At­tempts to reach Chief Sec­re­tary Far­ley Au­gus­tine were un­suc­cess­ful last evening.





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