Rad­hi­ca Sookraj

Kim­ber­ly Roberts yes­ter­day in­sists that her miss­ing fa­ther, Petrotrin fire­man Richard Vic­tor Roberts, has no en­e­mies and she hopes he is alive al­though two days have passed since his dis­ap­pear­ance. "Right now I am try­ing not to think about what hap­pened to him. I am hop­ing for the best. I am still wait­ing for him to come home alive," the teenag­er said. Kim­ber­ly said she last saw her fa­ther on Fri­day morn­ing when she left for school. "We both walked out the road and I caught the maxi to get to school and his co-work­er picked him up in his van. I knew he was go­ing to work in Guayagua­yare. He usu­al­ly worked there. "Every­body in Guaya, Princes Town and Rio knows my fa­ther. He is well liked. He had no en­e­mies," Kim­ber­ly said.

She ex­plained that the man who picked up Roberts on the day of his dis­ap­pear­ance is not known to the fam­i­ly. "He dark . . . I don't re­al­ly know him," she said. She said when Roberts failed to re­turn home on Fri­day, a re­port was made to the Rio Claro Po­lice Sta­tion. Kim­ber­ly said her fa­ther nev­er stayed out at nights, so it was un­usu­al when he did not re­turn home. Po­lice of­fi­cers said they still have no leads to Roberts' where­abouts. Of­fi­cers yes­ter­day con­tin­ued to search forest­ed ar­eas off Lazare Road, Poole Vil­lage, Rio Claro, where the marked Petrotrin ve­hi­cle, in which he had been a pas­sen­ger, was pulled out of a riv­er.

Sol­diers from the Trinidad and To­ba­go Reg­i­ment and fire­men from the Mon Re­pos Fire Sta­tion, as well as of­fi­cers from the Petrotrin Port Fa­cil­i­ties Unit at Pointe-a-Pierre, joined the search for the miss­ing man yes­ter­day. A flat-bot­tomed boat has been de­ployed to as­sist in the search and res­cue ef­forts. Petrotrin's man­ag­er of cor­po­rate com­mu­ni­ca­tions, Gillian Fri­day, said Roberts, who was as­signed to the Petrotrin Pe­nal Fire Sta­tion, was re­port­ed miss­ing at 7.25 pm on Fri­day af­ter he and an­oth­er of­fi­cer failed to re­turn from an as­sign­ment at Guayagua­yare. She said the men had dri­ven Petrotrin ve­hi­cle TCM 6853 to Guayagua­yare but had not re­port­ed back to work at the des­ig­nat­ed time. "Petrotrin wish­es to as­sure all af­fect­ed par­ties that ef­forts to find Mr Roberts will con­tin­ue," Fri­day said.