Six months after her decomposing body was found miles away from her Lopinot home, the family of Shenese Samuel finally got some closure. Samuel, whose body was found off a track along Maqueripe Road, Chaguaramas, having gone missing days before, was identified yesterday.
Speaking with the T&T Guardian at their home at Mc David Trace, Lopinot, yesterday, Samuel’s mother, Paula, said she felt relieved she could now get closure. The 42-year-old mother of four said since her daughter went searching for a job on January 24 she has been lighting a candle near a picture of her.
Some 40-plus candles later, she said: “Shenese was my favourite daughter. She never used to give trouble or anything. She wanted to be a police officer because when I was younger I wanted to be a police officer.” She said her daughter did not say much about the job interview because she did not want to “jinx it.”
Also speaking with the T&T Guardian was Shenese’s older brother, Travis, who said he warned his sister not to go to Port-of-Spain for the interview because she had no friends there. He described her as “country girl come to town. “I told her take care we don’t have to take you out of a drain. I tell her that the day before she went missing. I swear to God, I tell she that,” he said.
Samuel said her daughter was at the Forensic Science Centre, St James, for over four months and no one bothered to call the family. Instead, they were told that she had run off to Tobago to be with a man, prompting her father, Sinatra, to make the journey there, only to be disappointed. She added her daughter might have been identified sooner had staff at the FSC done a better job. Her daughter, she said, was eventually identified by the green dye at the end of her hair.
Her husband told the T&T Guardian he went to a funeral home on February 1, the day his daughter’s body was found and after being assured the body was that of someone much older who was wearing a wig he left and continued the search for her. Samuel was found in a track off the Maqueripe Road, Chaguaramas, around 2 pm by a jogger who got a stench from the bushes. Her hands were tied behind her back and she was stabbed twice in the chest, her autopsy revealed.
The couple offered this advice to parents who were where they once were: “Pray! There is nowhere to turn to because no one was helping us so all they could do is pray.” The Samuels were referring to the relatives of Ashma Zalima Naimool and Sonnera Campbell, who disappeared in unrelated incidents and are still missing.
Naimool, 32, of Dinsley Village, Tacarigua, was last seen by her relatives on June 3. In the other case Campbell, 30, an employee of Massy Ltd, Morvant, was last seen by relatives on June 6 around 9 pm at her Tunapuna home. Relatives said Campbell was supposed to go out with friends but never made it. She is the mother of a nine-year-old boy.