Search underway for baby believed to be in Marabella River

Sascha Wil­son

Hunters Search and Res­cue teams are search­ing a wa­ter­course at Park Lane, Gopaul Lands, Mara­bel­la, af­ter re­ceiv­ing a re­port that the body of a ba­by was seen float­ing in the wa­ter.

Po­lice re­spond­ed short­ly af­ter 5 pm af­ter a woman claimed her two chil­dren had seen what ap­peared to be the body of a ba­by float­ing in the wa­ter­course.

How­ev­er, an ini­tial search yield­ed no re­sults.

In a video cir­cu­lat­ed on so­cial me­dia, the woman said her son and daugh­ter were rid­ing through Gopaul Lands when they spot­ted what they be­lieved was a ba­by in the riv­er.

She ap­pealed for those re­spon­si­ble to be held ac­count­able, say­ing, "We hope we find who it is who do this, who harm that ba­by. We will like to get jus­tice to know who is these peo­ple who is do­ing this kind of thing."

Hunters Search and Res­cue Team Cap­tain Val­lence Ramb­harat said they re­ceived a re­quest from the Trinidad and To­ba­go Po­lice Ser­vice at around 6.08 pm to as­sist in search­ing the Mara­bel­la Riv­er for the body of a ba­by fol­low­ing a re­port­ed sight­ing by a boy rid­ing a bi­cy­cle.

"Our team's re­sponse was im­me­di­ate and our team­mates were search­ing the Mara­bel­la Riv­er by 7 pm. The wa­ter in the riv­er is about 18 inch­es deep. A block­age was met about 1,000 feet down­riv­er from the sight­ing. By 9 pm, our team had thor­ough­ly searched this sec­tion twice. As the search con­tin­ues, a third ef­fort is un­der­way."

An­oth­er Hunters Search and Res­cue Team, led by Sham­sudeen Ayube, is al­so search­ing.

Po­lice have not yet re­ceived any re­ports of a miss­ing ba­by and are still try­ing to ver­i­fy the al­leged sight­ing.