Goodwood wants justice as little Angelo yet to be found

Stephon Nicholas

To­ba­go Cor­re­spon­dent

The peo­ple of Good­wood are call­ing for jus­tice in the dis­ap­pear­ance of two-year-old An­ge­lo To­bias-Plaza.

Af­ter four days of search­ing land and sea, au­thor­i­ties have failed to lo­cate the tod­dler, who re­port­ed­ly went miss­ing from his Good­wood home on Mon­day night.

An­ge­lo lived with his moth­er Kali­fa To­bias and her boyfriend Shan­non Miller at Cam­bridge Trace, ap­prox­i­mate­ly 100 me­tres from the sea.

De­spite a labour­er claim­ing to have seen the body in the sea around 6.30 am on Tues­day, there have been no fur­ther sight­ings de­spite a de­ploy­ment of drones, po­lice, sol­diers, Coast Guard, To­ba­go Emer­gency Man­age­ment Agency mem­bers, a pri­vate ma­rine com­pa­ny and the Hunters’ Search and Res­cue Team.

Po­lice yes­ter­day con­tin­ued to ques­tion Miller and To­bias af­ter search­ing the home ear­li­er this week.

An­ge­lo’s bi­o­log­i­cal fa­ther An­to­nio Plaza, who lives in Trinidad, ar­rived in the Good­wood area with his moth­er Meena Plaza yes­ter­day.

The grand­moth­er said she re­mains op­ti­mistic An­ge­lo is alive.

“I don’t un­der­stand why they can’t find my grand­son dead or alive. Where is him? We need to find him,” she said.

“I know he liv­ing some­where. He not dead. He is alive. My God tell me my grand­son is alive and I come to see. If my God is re­al, we gonna find him alive.”

She urged the po­lice to help find the child.

In an in­ter­view with an­oth­er me­dia house, To­bias in­sist­ed her son did not wan­der in­to the ocean. She said An­ge­lo was pet­ri­fied of the dark and the sea.

“Them say­ing the child is in the sea. He is not in the sea. I keep telling peo­ple that. Al­lyuh check some­where else,” she said.

She spec­u­lat­ed that he may have been kid­napped.

Mean­while, the child’s bi­o­log­i­cal dad has de­scribed the sto­ry be­ing told to po­lice as un­be­liev­able.

Wendy Des Vi­gnes, pres­i­dent of the Good­wood Vil­lage Coun­cil, told Guardian Me­dia that the moth­ers in the area want to know what hap­pened with An­ge­lo.

She said the po­lice are now show­ing in­tent in their in­ves­ti­ga­tion.

“The peo­ple feel­ing a lit­tle more re­laxed even though they eh re­trieve the body as yet,” she said.

Des Vi­gnes said vil­lagers will be the voice of An­ge­lo.

“Peo­ple want jus­tice. It is a child that has no voice. We don’t know what re­al­ly be­come of this child.

“It is a hu­man be­ing, not an an­i­mal that you could just for­get about. Some­body needs to know what went on with this child,” she said.

Des Vi­gnes urged the par­ents to tell the po­lice every­thing they know.

“I am a moth­er and a grand­moth­er... Most of the peo­ple out there are moth­ers and they are feel­ing hurt about this child.”

She said the in­ci­dent would set a prece­dent on the du­ty of care to chil­dren.

“If they leave this like this... a child could go miss­ing and it is okay, they would just rule it as the par­ents don’t know where the child is, so it is nor­mal. That is not nor­mal. Peo­ple need to know and give ac­count about chil­dren’s dis­ap­pear­ance.”

Megan Mor­ri­son, area rep­re­sen­ta­tive for Mt St George/Good­wood, said she vis­it­ed the fam­i­ly on Thurs­day night.

Asked what ad­vice she has for par­ents, she said, “It is al­ways good as par­ents to keep an eye on your chil­dren, es­pe­cial­ly the times we are liv­ing in.”

She added, “You see a man’s face, you don’t see his heart... We as par­ents have to pay par­tic­u­lar at­ten­tion to our chil­dren and their well-be­ing and how they progress in life, be­cause you re­al­ly can’t trust any­one. Some­times, we our­selves as par­ents make mis­takes.”