Three days of ex­ten­sive search­es for miss­ing eight-year-old Daniel Guer­ra end­ed in tragedy yes­ter­day, as the boy's de­com­pos­ing body was dis­cov­ered along the Tarou­ba Link Road, San Fer­nan­do. As so­ca mu­sic blast­ed from the near­by Tarou­ba Recre­ation Ground where a crick­et match was in progress, Guer­ra's rel­a­tives wailed and screamed when they saw his bloat­ed body. Po­lice re­ports state the Gas­par­il­lo Gov­ern­ment Pri­ma­ry School stu­dent's body was found in the vicin­i­ty of the large land­slip along the Tarou­ba Link Road at around 5 pm. A pass­er-by con­tact­ed po­lice af­ter the boy's body was spot­ted on the bank of the Tarou­ba Riv­er.

Po­lice spec­tu­lat­ed that the body washed up on the bank and might have been dumped a short dis­tance from where it was dis­cov­ered. The cause of the boy's death is yet to be de­ter­mined. Po­lice, how­ev­er, said it was too ear­ly to say if there were marks of vi­o­lence. Po­lice cor­doned off the Link Road, pre­vent­ing ve­hic­u­lar traf­fic from en­ter­ing and leav­ing the area as crime scene in­ves­ti­ga­tors combed the riv­er bank for ev­i­dence. In the fad­ing light, they used flash lights to con­tin­ue their work.

Guer­ra's moth­er Ra­mona In­dars­ingh was es­cort­ed to the scene by po­lice. As the dis­traught woman stared at her son's body from a dis­tance, she was sup­port­ed by po­lice of­fi­cers. Rel­a­tives were re­luc­tant to speak with the me­dia and in­stead leaned on each oth­er for sup­port. While the cir­cum­stances sur­round­ing Guer­ra's death re­main un­clear, Tabaquite MP Dr Sura­jrat­tan Ram­bachan, who had ear­li­er in the day vis­it­ed Guer­ra's home at Be­deau Street, Gas­par­il­lo, con­demned those re­spon­si­ble for the stu­dent's death.

"This is a heinous crime in which an in­no­cent child has died...It is the kind of crime that de­serves max­i­mum pun­ish­ment," he de­clared. "It en­cour­ages me even more to en­sure the Cap­i­tal Pun­ish­ment Bill be­ing de­bat­ed in Par­lia­ment will be passed so that these kinds of crimes will be clas­si­fied as mur­der one. "There is no ex­cuse what­so­ev­er for the mur­der of an in­no­cent child, what­ev­er the cir­cum­stances. "I hope that the po­lice will get to the bot­tom of this as fast as pos­si­ble." Ram­bachan said Guer­ra's dis­ap­pear­ance on Fri­day af­ter­noon "has caused ap­pre­hen­sion in Gas­par­il­lo and en­vi­rons and there­fore it is im­por­tant that this mur­der be solved." He said af­ter spend­ing al­most two hours with Guer­ra's fam­i­ly yes­ter­day, he par­tic­u­lar­ly "felt the pain" of the boy's grand­par­ents. In­ves­ti­ga­tions in­to Guer­ra's death are con­tin­u­ing.