Yvonne Webb

"Those of us in this na­tion... one of our daugh­ters in our land may be in dan­ger. Let us give our prayers up to her, for her bless­ings, wher­ev­er she may be." So said Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar be­fore leav­ing the Ste Madeleine home of San Fer­nan­do May­or Mar­lene Coudray on Tues­day night.

The PM, ac­com­pa­nied by oth­er Gov­ern­ment min­is­ters, in­clud­ing Jack Warn­er, Dr Roodal Mooni­lal and Chan­dresh Shar­ma, spent over three hours bring­ing com­fort to Coudray, her fam­i­ly and chil­dren of her miss­ing daugh­ter, Michelle Coudray-Greaves. Per­sad-Bisses­sar said even though there had been no pos­i­tive iden­ti­fi­ca­tion of Coudray-Greaves' body as yet, an in­ter-faith ser­vice will be held for her, when May­or Coudray re­turns from Ja­maica on Sun­day.

Coudray-Greaves' es­tranged Ja­maican hus­band, Sean, is ex­pect­ed to re­turn with the fam­i­ly. Coudray, her part­ner, Lawrence Achong, and her broth­er trav­elled to Ja­maica yes­ter­day, tak­ing with them den­tal records the Ja­maica Po­lice can use to de­ter­mine whether the body found in a Mon­tego Bay cane­field on Mon­day is that of her daugh­ter.

A rel­a­tive said Coudray-Greaves' fa­ther, Mervyn Coudray, was tak­ing the death of his younger daugh­ter very bad­ly and was not pre­pared to speak to the me­dia. Coudray's par­ty was ex­pect­ed to ar­rive in Kingston at 1 pm yes­ter­day. Per­sad-Bisses­sar said they would be met by the T&T High Com­mis­sion­er, Dr Iva Gloudon.

The Trinida­di­ans were sched­uled to meet with lead in­ves­ti­ga­tors at Mon­tego Bay, two hours lat­er, to view the re­mains and pro­vide the den­tal records for a foren­sic com­par­i­son. An au­top­sy was sched­uled to be per­formed yes­ter­day at 8 am (Ja­maica time), on the re­mains found in a burnt-out cane­field near where Coudray-Greaves went miss­ing on June 2, days af­ter leav­ing Trinidad.

She lived at Corn­wall Courts and taught Span­ish at Corn­wall Col­lege. Rel­a­tives, re­spond­ing to news that a per­son of in­ter­est was as­sist­ing the po­lice with their in­ves­ti­ga­tion, said they knew who he was. At the fam­i­ly's home on Tues­day night, scores of peo­ple, tran­scend­ing all po­lit­i­cal lines, showed up to ex­tend con­do­lences to Coudray.

Coudray, a for­mer mem­ber of the Con­gress of the Peo­ple (COP), was elect­ed a deputy leader of the Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress (UNC) ear­li­er this year. Achong is a for­mer Peo­ple's Na­tion­al Move­ment may­or of Point Fortin and Labour Min­is­ter.

Vis­i­tors hugged and kissed Coudray-Greaves' three chil­dren-Shanelle, 11; Danielle, sev­en and Joshua, five.

Dur­ing the evening news, Shanelle point­ed to the tele­vi­sion, around which mourn­ers were gath­ered, and said: "That is my mum­my." She was quick­ly tak­en away by a rel­a­tive. Dur­ing the evening, Joshua, cry­ing out for his moth­er, was in­con­solable in the arms of a rel­a­tive. In spite of that, Per­sad-Bisses­sar said the chil­dren ap­peared to be in good spir­its.

She said: "My sis­ter Mar­lene... she is a tow­er of strength, to be strong for her grand­chil­dren who are de­pend­ing on her. When things hap­pen, we don't know why it hap­pens but we keep trust­ing the Lord to give her the strength and courage." She said no one knew when tragedy would strike. "It is al­ways bad when it is some­one you love but even sad­der when you are a moth­er and there is some­one who you love who is en­dan­gered," she added.

The PM pledged the full sup­port of her par­ty to Coudray, say­ing she recog­nised her pain. She urged Coudray to keep the faith and vowed to keep pray­ing for her and her fam­i­ly. Coudray thanked the Prime Min­is­ter, her Gov­ern­ment, col­leagues, fam­i­ly and friends for their love and sup­port, which she said made her feel very com­fort­ed.