Fisherman’s family seeks DNA tests after two bodies found in SVG

Stephon Nicholas

To­ba­go Cor­re­spon­dent

Rel­a­tives of one of the two To­ba­go fish­er­men who have been miss­ing for near­ly two weeks are turn­ing to DNA test­ing for an­swers af­ter two de­com­pos­ing bod­ies were dis­cov­ered in the wa­ters of St Vin­cent and the Grenadines.

The MacLean fam­i­ly told Guardian Me­dia they have de­cid­ed on the DNA test­ing.

Low­lands res­i­dent David Mclean and his friend Kester Alexan­der of Buc­coo have not been seen since they left Scar­bor­ough on Oc­to­ber 9 to go fish­ing.

Search­es by rel­a­tives and the Trinidad and To­ba­go Coast Guard in lo­cal wa­ters proved un­suc­cess­ful, while aer­i­al search­es al­so failed to lo­cate the men.

On Oc­to­ber 13, au­thor­i­ties in St Vin­cent and the Grenadines re­port­ed that a man’s body had been found float­ing near Stubbs Bay and Di­a­mond. An au­top­sy was un­able to de­ter­mine the cause of death be­cause of the ad­vanced state of de­com­po­si­tion, but DNA was ex­tract­ed from the bone mar­row.

St Vin­cent po­lice con­firmed to Guardian Me­dia that no one had come for­ward to re­port a miss­ing per­son or iden­ti­fy the body.

On Wednes­day, a sec­ond de­com­posed body was dis­cov­ered in St Vin­cent wa­ters, rais­ing fur­ther con­cerns among the miss­ing men’s rel­a­tives.

Al­though ini­tial re­ports in­di­cate that the first body may not be con­nect­ed to the miss­ing fish­er­men, Mclean’s rel­a­tives said they had con­tact­ed St Vin­cent po­lice and would sub­mit DNA sam­ples for test­ing. The un­cer­tain­ty has con­tin­ued to cause emo­tion­al dis­tress for Alexan­der’s fam­i­ly. He is the fa­ther of three chil­dren.

Rel­a­tives of both men said they were des­per­ate for an­swers.