Bodies of two women found in shallow grave remain unidentified

Po­lice are yet to iden­ti­fy the bod­ies of two His­pan­ic women un­earthed from a shal­low grave in Cen­tral Trinidad ear­li­er this week.

Of­fi­cers were called to agri­cul­tur­al lands north of Ram­saran Trace, off War­ren Road in Cunu­pia, at ap­prox­i­mate­ly 11:30 p.m. on Wednes­day, where they dis­cov­ered a dis­turbed patch of earth some 42 feet north of the east–west road­way op­po­site Ram­saran Trace Ex­ten­sion.

Up­on ex­ca­va­tion, they found the bod­ies of the two women buried in a shal­low grave. Their heads had been wrapped in bub­ble wrap, and one of the women had her hands bound.

On Sat­ur­day, po­lice told Guardian Me­dia that no fur­ther in­for­ma­tion had been re­ceived.

Venezue­lan hu­man rights ac­tivist Yese­nia Gon­za­lez said she has been work­ing close­ly with mem­bers of the lo­cal Venezue­lan com­mu­ni­ty to help iden­ti­fy the de­ceased. She con­firmed that she has en­list­ed the help of Venezue­lan me­dia out­lets to pub­li­cise the case and ap­peal for in­for­ma­tion.

Gon­za­lez warned of a dis­turb­ing trend in Trinidad, where women are traf­ficked from Venezuela and forced in­to pros­ti­tu­tion. She said many are lured by false promis­es of a bet­ter life through so­cial me­dia, on­ly to find them­selves sold in­to sex work up­on ar­rival—of­ten based on their age, phys­i­cal ap­pear­ance, and even their vir­gin­i­ty sta­tus.

Ac­cord­ing to Gon­za­lez, traf­fick­ers some­times hold vic­tims un­til a ran­som—some­times as high as TT$40,000—is paid. She said she has worked along­side the Counter-Traf­fick­ing Unit and point­ed to the res­cue of over 100 women from a traf­fick­ing ring ear­li­er this year.

Res­i­dents of Ram­saran Trace said the area has pre­vi­ous­ly been used as a dump­ing ground for mur­der vic­tims. They called for in­creased po­lice pa­trols, not­ing that the nar­row, poor­ly lit roads lead­ing in­to the agri­cul­tur­al lands tend to at­tract crim­i­nal ac­tiv­i­ty.

Ch­agua­nas West MP Dr Neil Go­sine de­scribed the dis­cov­ery as “deeply trou­bling”.

“It high­lights the se­ri­ous crime chal­lenges we face as a na­tion. At this time, I do not wish to com­ment fur­ther, as I am not the po­lice and would not want to spec­u­late or in­ter­fere with any on­go­ing in­ves­ti­ga­tion,” Dr Go­sine said.

He went on to crit­i­cise the pre­vi­ous ad­min­is­tra­tion for fail­ing to ad­e­quate­ly ad­dress the crime sit­u­a­tion, stat­ing, “Un­der a UNC gov­ern­ment, we are com­mit­ted to a more proac­tive, strate­gic, and sus­tained ap­proach to restor­ing safe­ty and se­cu­ri­ty for all cit­i­zens.”