Melis­sa Doughty

There was hard­ly room left in the Four Roads Pen­te­costal Church, La Puer­ta Av­enue, Diego Mar­tin, as hun­dreds of res­i­dents, fam­i­ly, friends and res­i­dents turned out to say their fi­nal good­byes to 31-year-old Everd Gerd Ben­tham yes­ter­day. Gov­ern­ment of­fi­cials were no­tice­ably ab­sent. Ben­tham died as a land­slide which de­stroyed his fam­i­ly's home last Sat­ur­day buried him un­der earth and rub­ble.

The strains of How Great Thou Art and Amaz­ing Grace rang through the packed church, played by Ben­tham's band­mates of La Cre­ole Pan Side and ac­com­pa­nied by the church's band to which he al­so be­longed Ben­tham was de­scribed by many as a lov­ing and re­spect­ful young man who would do any­thing for any­one. His cousin Keisha Ben­tham said: "Everd was a very lov­ing, friend­ly, out­go­ing, play­ful and warm­heart­ed per­son. I am in shock. It just hurt­ing, hurt­ing."

Avil McKen­zie, a La Puer­ta res­i­dent who knew Ben­tham for most of his life, said: "He was al­so a mem­ber of this church (Four Roads Pen­te­costal) and I at­tend this church. He was a very re­spect­ful per­son. Know­ing the per­son he was it was not ex­pect­ed." The fu­ner­al ser­vice was of­fi­ci­at­ed by Rev Odette Hors­ford who called on the con­gre­ga­tion to be pre­pared for death as no one was aware of the time of their demise.

Sev­er­al mem­bers of the La Puer­ta com­mu­ni­ty ex­pressed hurt and dis­ap­point­ment at the lack of gov­ern­ment of­fi­cials. One man, who wished to re­main anony­mous, said: "All of them come up here when it had the floods. Now, not one of them show their face." Ricky Gar­cia, Con­gress of the Peo­ple's (COP) coun­cil­lor for Glen­coe, Good­wood and La Puer­ta al­so ex­pressed his dis­ap­point­ment at the lack of gov­ern­ment rep­re­sen­ta­tion.

He asked: "When Everd died they came up here and take pic­ture. A week af­ter where are they now? Where the gov­ern­ment, the MP, the min­is­ter?" The ser­vice was in­ter­rupt­ed by heavy rain which caused Rev Hors­ford to quick­ly call on the con­gre­ga­tion to the view the body and then head to Cameron Road Ceme­tery, Pe­tit Val­ley for Ben­tham's in­ter­ment. Last Sat­ur­day floods raged through most of Diego Mar­tin, parts of Pe­tit Val­ley and Mar­aval as well as south­ern Trinidad. The floods re­sult­ed in the deaths of Ben­tham and 66-year-old Solomon Brit­to.