Child’s body washes ashore after migrant boat incident

SASCHA WIL­SON

Se­nior Re­porter

The body of a Venezue­lan child washed ashore at Los Iros beach in Erin this morn­ing.

Hunters Search and Res­cue Team cap­tain Val­lence Ramb­harat con­firmed that his team lo­cat­ed the child’s body on a rocky sec­tion of the shore­line.

The child has been iden­ti­fied as Brithanny Lin­neth Yanett León Pala­cios.

Ramb­harat said the team went to Los Iros af­ter re­ceiv­ing in­for­ma­tion that an over­loaded pirogue car­ry­ing about 20 to 30 Venezue­lan na­tion­als had left Trinidad for Venezuela on Wednes­day.

Guardian Me­dia un­der­stands that the ves­sel, which was al­so car­ry­ing car­go, may have de­vel­oped en­gine prob­lems short­ly af­ter leav­ing Trinidad and To­ba­go’s shores.

Most of the pas­sen­gers re­port­ed­ly man­aged to swim back to shore.

It is be­lieved that two adults re­main un­ac­count­ed for.

Un­con­firmed re­ports al­so sug­gest that two of the pas­sen­gers may have been among the re­cent es­capees from the Im­mi­gra­tion De­ten­tion Cen­tre.