PM backs Hunters team amid video backlash; warns teens about acting like adults

Jesse Ramdeo & Kevon Felmine

Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar has come out in de­fence of the Hunters’ Search and Res­cue Team, led by Sham­sudeen Ayube and is warn­ing teenagers who choose to be­have like adults that they can­not ex­pect to fall back on their sta­tus as chil­dren when the law in­ter­venes.

The Prime Min­is­ter yes­ter­day weighed in on the con­tro­ver­sy sur­round­ing a vi­ral video of a 13-year-old girl who was re­port­ed miss­ing and sub­se­quent­ly found by Ayube’s team.

How­ev­er, she ac­knowl­edg­ing that lessons must be learnt fol­low­ing con­cerns raised by the Trinidad and To­ba­go Po­lice Ser­vice (TTPS) and mem­bers of the pub­lic about the pub­li­ca­tion of a video iden­ti­fy­ing the mi­nor.

Speak­ing with Guardian Me­dia yes­ter­day, Per­sad-Bisses­sar ques­tioned why the pub­lic de­bate ap­peared to be cen­tred on the video rather than the cir­cum­stances sur­round­ing the child’s dis­ap­pear­ance.

“So the prob­lem is that the search group post­ed a video? I thought the prob­lem would have been that a mi­nor who was miss­ing for 26 days, whose moth­er was look­ing for her, was ac­tu­al­ly found liv­ing in the for­est with a 49-year-old man,” she said.

The TTPS called for the video to be tak­en down, ex­press­ing con­cern that iden­ti­fy­ing the child could ex­pose her to stig­ma, trau­ma and fur­ther harm. It added that pub­li­ca­tion was a crim­i­nal of­fence.

In a state­ment, the po­lice ser­vice ac­knowl­edged the con­tri­bu­tion of com­mu­ni­ty or­gan­i­sa­tions, in­clud­ing the Hunters’ Search and Res­cue Team, in lo­cat­ing miss­ing per­sons. How­ev­er, it stressed that im­ages of miss­ing chil­dren are cir­cu­lat­ed for the sole pur­pose of find­ing them and that their iden­ti­ties must be pro­tect­ed when they are the sub­ject of a po­lice in­ves­ti­ga­tion.

The con­tro­ver­sy comes for Ayube’s team less than three weeks af­ter re­ceiv­ing a na­tion­al award for ser­vice to the coun­try.

Ayube and Val­lence Ramb­harat, both lead­ers of their own Hunters Search and Res­cue teams, were con­ferred with the Hum­ming­bird Medal (Gold) at the 2026 Na­tion­al Awards for de­vot­ed ser­vice through vol­un­teer search-and-res­cue op­er­a­tions, dis­as­ter re­sponse and sup­port to law en­force­ment.

Af­ter the call made by the TTPS, both videos of the child have since been re­moved from Face­book.

Con­tact­ed for com­ment, Ayube would not say whether he had read the re­lease or been con­tact­ed by po­lice. He said he spoke to his lawyer and would be in court with se­nior coun­sel come Mon­day af­ter threat­en­ing to drag the me­dia to court, in­sist­ing he did noth­ing wrong by post­ing videos of a re­cov­ered 13-year-old.

“That video did not break any law. The moth­er gave her OK to make the video,” Ayube said.

But the girl’s aunt, who said she is her le­gal guardian, wants an­swers. The child lived with her and went miss­ing from her home, and she re­port­ed it to po­lice. She said she found out on so­cial me­dia that her niece had been found.

“I am re­al­ly grate­ful that they found her, yes, but I would like to know in what cir­cum­stances, why you all pub­lished my niece like that and ques­tioned her like that on the me­dia. This is a mi­nor; this is a child,” she said.

For Ayube, the tar­get was the me­dia. He said HSR was broke and had its eye on their pock­ets.

“We are broke. We need some mon­ey, and I am go­ing to get it from the me­dia.”

He blamed mem­bers of Ramb­harat’s team for keep­ing the crit­i­cism alive, said the me­dia had been split­ting the coun­try, and ac­cused an­oth­er me­dia house of align­ing with the Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment.

Ayube al­so told Guardian Me­dia that he did not say some of the things at­trib­uted to him in an­oth­er news­pa­per’s re­port on the back­lash. That re­port said he blamed the crit­i­cism on his be­ing Guyanese.

For­mer cul­ture min­is­ter Ran­dall Mitchell re­spond­ed to that claim on Face­book, mak­ing clear the crit­i­cism was about the child and not where Ayube is from.

“Your ex­po­sure of the child’s iden­ti­ty in that video has caused that child harm. You made a car­di­nal er­ror. Un­der­stand the mis­take, apol­o­gise for that er­ror so that it is not re­peat­ed. Re­move the video,” Mitchell wrote. He thanked Ayube for his work, not­ing the na­tion­al award.

Ramb­harat al­so re­ject­ed Ayube’s claims. He said he has “ab­solute­ly no knowl­edge” of his mem­bers post­ing such crit­i­cism.

Ramb­harat said his team asks po­lice to go and col­lect miss­ing mi­nors and he found it in­ap­pro­pri­ate to see the teen in wet clothes.

“Mi­nors must nev­er be por­trayed as adults,” he said, and vol­un­teers must know the Chil­dren’s Act and the Sex­u­al Of­fences Act in­side out.

“There are al­ways fam­i­lies in­volved in miss­ing per­sons. You al­ways have to take in­to con­sid­er­a­tion the feel­ings of the fam­i­ly at all times,” Ramb­harat said.

While the Prime Min­is­ter said the po­lice would es­tab­lish the facts, she ar­gued that the in­ci­dent high­light­ed a wider prob­lem in­volv­ing miss­ing-per­son re­ports and the re­sources re­quired to re­spond to them.

“I think most cit­i­zens in this coun­try are very un­aware to the re­al­i­ty of the mag­ni­tude of dys­func­tion­al be­hav­iour in so­ci­ety,” Per­sad-Bisses­sar said.

She added that state se­cu­ri­ty agen­cies and pri­vate search groups com­mit­ted time and mon­ey and per­son­nel to lo­cat­ing peo­ple who had re­port­ed­ly dis­ap­peared but had vol­un­tar­i­ly gone else­where.

“We could use these re­sources to search for ac­tu­al le­git­i­mate dis­ap­pear­ance cas­es,” she said.

The Prime Min­is­ter al­so had a mes­sage for those crit­i­cis­ing the search team, chal­leng­ing them to par­tic­i­pate in search ef­forts them­selves.

“My ad­vice for those who are crit­i­cis­ing is that they should go out and search for miss­ing peo­ple them­selves,” she said.

To the Hunters’ Search and Res­cue Team, she of­fered sup­port but urged it to take pre­cau­tions in fu­ture.

“To the search team, con­tin­ue your good work but learn from this in­ci­dent to avoid fu­ture prob­lems,” she said.

Per­sad-Bisses­sar al­so had a strong warn­ing to teenagers.

“To teenagers, some of you want to act like adults, but as soon as the law in­ter­venes, you re­vert to be­ing a child. That’s not go­ing to con­tin­ue,” Per­sad-Bisses­sar said.

“If you want to be­have or mis­be­have like adults, you will be treat­ed like adults by the law.”

The Prime Min­is­ter warned of the con­se­quences if law­less­ness con­tin­ued.

“This law­less­ness and self­ish at­ti­tude that has per­vad­ed this coun­try for decades has to end or we will end up like Haiti in a few years,” she said.