Stepdad charged with Angelo’s murder

A 24-year-old Good­wood man has been charged with the mur­der of two-year-old An­ge­lo To­bias-Plaza, near­ly two weeks af­ter the tod­dler’s dis­ap­pear­ance trig­gered an is­land-wide search op­er­a­tion in To­ba­go.

In a me­dia re­lease is­sued last evening, the Trinidad and To­ba­go Po­lice Ser­vice (TTPS) said Shan­non Miller, 24, of Cam­bridge Trace, Good­wood, who was An­ge­lo’s step­fa­ther, was for­mal­ly charged fol­low­ing le­gal ad­vice from a Spe­cial­ist Ad­vis­er as­signed to the Of­fice of the Di­rec­tor of Pub­lic Pros­e­cu­tions (DPP).

Po­lice said An­ge­lo was re­port­ed miss­ing on May 11, prompt­ing what they de­scribed as a com­pre­hen­sive mul­ti-agency in­ves­ti­ga­tion.

The search ef­fort in­volved po­lice of­fi­cers, mem­bers of the To­ba­go Emer­gency Man­age­ment Agency (TEMA), the Hunters’ Search and Res­cue Team and oth­er agen­cies, with teams comb­ing both land and sea ar­eas across To­ba­go. Search op­er­a­tions lat­er ex­pand­ed to lo­ca­tions in­clud­ing the Stud­ley Park land­fill and oth­er ar­eas in an ef­fort to lo­cate the child.

Guardian Me­dia pre­vi­ous­ly re­port­ed that the case drew wide­spread pub­lic at­ten­tion as res­i­dents of Good­wood gath­ered re­peat­ed­ly, call­ing for an­swers and for An­ge­lo to be found.

Vil­lagers and fam­i­ly mem­bers al­so held vig­ils and joined search ef­forts as days passed with­out a break­through.

Po­lice said an au­di­ence was held with the Spe­cial­ist Ad­vis­er to re­view the cir­cum­stances sur­round­ing the child’s dis­ap­pear­ance, be­fore le­gal ad­vice was giv­en that there was suf­fi­cient ev­i­dence to pro­ceed with crim­i­nal charges.

The TTPS said it re­mained com­mit­ted to en­sur­ing in­ves­ti­ga­tions are con­duct­ed with pro­fes­sion­al­ism, dili­gence and in­tegri­ty.

De­spite the search­es, An­ge­lo’s body is yet to be found.