From 6 pm yesterday, scores of residents of Brasso Seco gathered together for a candlelight vigil and to give thanks for the safe return of teenage sisters Felicia and Jenelle Gonzales who were rescued by the police on Friday from a makeshift camp in the nearby forest. For the first time since the disappearance of five members of the community on October 26, villagers breathed a sigh of relief yesterday.
Janelle and Felicia’s mother, Irma Rampersad, Jenelle’s infant daughter Shania Amoroso and Felix Martinez, 51, were killed. Shania and Martinez’s bodies were found together in a red sleeping bag last Saturday, while Rampersad’s body was found tied to a tree on Tuesday. Rampersad and Martinez were strangled. To express gratitude that the sisters were found alive, villagers held hands, prayed and lit candles in front of Sherwin Jackman’s bar. They also remembered Rampersad, Shania and Hernandez in their prayers, describing them as good human beings. “We are overjoyed and elated. Words cannot express the way we are feeling right now. Just hearing that those girls were rescued yesterday has brought a new ray of hope for the community,” said one villager who requested anonymity.
The residents said they will rest only when the perpetrators are arrested. “The persons who did this must feel the full brunt of the law. They have brought fear and terror in our village. Brasso Seco has been stained...a stain that would take months to erase,” one villager said. Six men who gathered outside one of the bars in the area said just hearing that the girls were found alive was like a weight off their shoulders. “It has given us a new energy...a new hope,” one of them said. Another described his feeling as bittersweet.
They said the community will rally behind the young women. “We will give them all the support they need to overcome this ordeal. The next few months will surely be traumatic for them...especially for Janelle, having lost her young innocent baby. We will give them the strength to move on with their lives,” one resident said. Up to late yesterday, at Lalaja Road, armed police officers from the Northeastern Division Task Force and Inter Agency Task Force were combing the hillside looking for Azmon Alexander, described by police as the county’s most wanted man and a person of interest in the ongoing inquiry into the Brasso Seco abductions and killings. Gail Harford, who visited her sisters Janelle and Felicia at the Eric Williams Medical Sciences Complex yesterday, said they were both doing fine and under police guard.
Teen suspect arrested
Police arrested a 17-year-old Arima resident yesterday in connection with the abductions and murders of members of the Brasso Seco family. At around 2.30 pm yesterday officers from the Northern Division under the supervisions of Senior Superintendent Abraham and including ASP Moses, Insp Maraj Sgt Haywood, Sgt Katwaroo, officers from the Guard and Emergency Branch, Inter-Agency Task Force and the K-9 Branch acting on information went to Goat Hill, Bypass Road, Arima, where they arrested the suspect. He is now assisting police with their investigation.
Police continued their search yesterday for two men who eluded them during the rescue of sisters Jenelle and Felicia Gonzales from a makeshift camp in the Brasso Seco forest. They are also searching other persons of interest in connection with the case.