Man found dead in waters off Mt St George

Stephon Nicholas

To­ba­go Cor­re­spon­dent

A fall from a tree is be­lieved to have caused the death of a Ba­co­let man whose body was found float­ing in the sea in Mt St George yes­ter­day.

The de­ceased has been iden­ti­fied as Daniel Mc Lean, an em­ploy­ee of Dane Phillip Plumb­ing and En­ter­pris­es who sup­ple­ment­ed his in­come pick­ing co­conuts.

The fa­ther of one was re­port­ed miss­ing around 6 pm on Thurs­day, af­ter he left home and nev­er re­turned.

His clothes and a bunch of co­conuts were found un­der a co­conut tree near the coast­line but Mc Lean was not there.

Res­i­dents in Mt St George re­port­ed see­ing a body float­ing in the ocean yes­ter­day morn­ing and alert­ed the au­thor­i­ties.

Po­lice, the To­ba­go Emer­gency Man­age­ment Agency (TEMA) and Hunters’ Search and Res­cue Team (HSRT), who were in Good­wood search­ing for miss­ing tod­dler An­ge­lo To­bias-Plaza, re­spond­ed to the in­ci­dent.

HSRT leader Val­lence Ramb­harat said his group re­trieved Mc Lean’s body af­ter be­ing asked to by po­lice.

The body was placed on the sand and cov­ered with leaves un­til the DMO ar­rived.

To­ba­go ACP Rishi Singh was at the scene as well and con­soled Mc Lean’s broth­er.

Griev­ing cowork­ers and friends de­scribed Mc Lean as an ex­treme­ly pleas­ant and easy-go­ing per­son.

Mario Pope, who worked with Mc Lean, said he was more than a col­league.

“He was a fun per­son. He likes to lime, en­joy him­self. When we come from work, we used to make lil cook in the yard, play lil domi­noes. He was a good fel­la,” he said be­fore break­ing down in tears.

An­oth­er cowork­er, Dex­ter Miller, said Mc Lean was a very cool and hard­work­ing em­ploy­ee.

“On be­half of the com­pa­ny, I would like to of­fer con­do­lences to the fam­i­ly,” Miller said.

He said the own­er of the com­pa­ny was dis­traught af­ter hear­ing the news.

“The com­pa­ny is like fam­i­ly. We hold to­geth­er in every sit­u­a­tion. He was al­so liv­ing with some of his oth­er cowork­ers. We al­ways around and to­geth­er. It is not just a cowork­er that died, we see him as a fam­i­ly mem­ber. We tak­ing it very hard,” Miller said.

Mt St George/Good­wood area rep­re­sen­ta­tive Megan Mor­ri­son vis­it­ed the scene and ex­pressed con­do­lences to the fam­i­ly. She said she was par­tic­u­lar­ly sad­dened as it was the sec­ond tragedy in her elec­toral dis­trict fol­low­ing An­ge­lo’s dis­ap­pear­ance five days ago.

“It is very sad to see a loss of life on the is­land, whichev­er way it hap­pened,” she said.