Relatives of missing Laventille woman accuse Tobago cops of slow response

JENSEN LA VENDE

Se­nior Re­porter

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Rel­a­tives of miss­ing Laven­tille hair­dress­er LaTonya Chris­t­ian have ac­cused To­ba­go po­lice of drag­ging their feet in the search for the 23-year-old, prompt­ing a se­nior of­fi­cer to de­fend the in­ves­ti­ga­tion and ques­tion why she was re­port­ed miss­ing 15 days af­ter she was last seen.

At a can­dle­light vig­il held at the St Barb’s Bas­ket­ball Court in Port-of-Spain, on Wednes­day, Chris­t­ian’s aunt, Lystra, chas­tised the po­lice, sug­gest­ing that had her niece been from To­ba­go, the as­sis­tance may have been greater.

Ac­cord­ing to a po­lice miss­ing per­sons re­port, Chris­t­ian was last seen on Oc­to­ber 8 and was re­port­ed miss­ing at the Shir­van Road Po­lice Sta­tion on Oc­to­ber 23.

Lystra said her broth­er, LaTonya’s fa­ther, is in To­ba­go help­ing with the search for his child and is very de­spon­dent.

“He is say­ing he has no help over there from our au­thor­i­ties, from our peo­ple who are our au­thor­i­ty...the po­lice of­fi­cers are fail­ing. They are fail­ing.”

She added that she has no an­i­mos­i­ty to­wards the po­lice but be­lieves that more could be done.

“I love our po­lice. I love the po­lice you know, but they al­ways come af­ter the fact. I have noth­ing against po­lice. I have noth­ing against my coun­try or our coun­try, but some­how black peo­ple does al­ways come last.”

Se­nior Su­per­in­ten­dent of the To­ba­go Di­vi­sion, Rod­hill Kirk, said the ac­cu­sa­tion that po­lice are not giv­ing the case any pri­or­i­ty “broke his heart,” adding that the po­lice are of­ten used as scape­goats.

“This mat­ter on­ly came to the at­ten­tion of the po­lice on the Oc­to­ber 23, on­ly to recog­nise that this per­son went miss­ing since the Oc­to­ber 8. And I’m think­ing, be­tween the 8th and the 23rd, what hap­pened? Why did no one re­port this per­son miss­ing?”

He added that while his heart goes out to the fam­i­ly, the po­lice have been un­fair­ly judged.

“From the minute the po­lice got the re­port, I know they have been on the ground, ex­plor­ing all the avail­able an­gles and in­for­ma­tion that they would have had. And I know that for sure. I’m not on­ly de­fend­ing the po­lice of­fi­cers, but this is what has been hap­pen­ing from the minute it came to the at­ten­tion of the po­lice. So to say that the po­lice have not been do­ing any­thing or are drag­ging their feet be­cause they’re from Trinidad, they are liv­ing in Trinidad and To­ba­go!”

Kirk said the po­lice are con­tin­u­ing their in­ves­ti­ga­tions and would pro­vide feed­back to the fam­i­ly as soon as in­for­ma­tion be­comes avail­able.

Al­so at the vig­il was Mem­ber of Par­lia­ment for Laven­tille, Ka­reem Mar­celle, who en­cour­aged those gath­ered to re­mem­ber the fam­i­ly in prayer and of­fer the nec­es­sary sup­port as they seek an­swers in lo­cat­ing their miss­ing rel­a­tive.