Jensen La Vende

The com­plet­ed au­top­sy in­to the cause of death for Shan­non Ban­field yes­ter­day re­vealed the 20-year-old was smoth­ered with a tow­el in the IAM and Com­pa­ny Lim­it­ed ware­house where she was found.

Last Fri­day, pathol­o­gist Dr Hughvon Des Vi­gnes had stat­ed that the au­top­sy was in­con­clu­sive pend­ing fur­ther in­ves­ti­ga­tions. Yes­ter­day, Des Vi­gnes fi­nal­ly com­plet­ed his re­port af­ter Crime Scene In­ves­ti­ga­tors re­turned to where Ban­field was found and dis­cov­ered a blood­ied tow­el they sus­pect was used to end her life and took it back to the FSC for test­ing.

Now that a cause of death has been de­ter­mined, po­lice can and have sought ad­vice on whether to charge a sus­pect in po­lice cus­tody for the death. With­out the cause of death, a charge could not have been prof­fered against any­one, since on­ly the cause of death can de­ter­mine whether it was a nat­ur­al or un­nat­ur­al death.

Up to late last night, in­ves­ti­ga­tors were de­lib­er­at­ing with Di­rec­tor of Pub­lic Pros­e­cu­tions, Roger Gas­pard SC, on whether or not to charge a sus­pect in Ban­field's mur­der.

On Sat­ur­day, Matthew Ma­haraj, a man once deemed a per­son of in­ter­est in the killing, was re­leased from po­lice cus­tody af­ter no ev­i­dence was found link­ing him to the mur­der.

Ma­haraj and all oth­er em­ploy­ees were ques­tioned by po­lice and all but one was sub­se­quent­ly re­leased. He and the oth­er man were the on­ly ones whose pho­tographs and names were re­leased by the po­lice as be­ing able to as­sist them in their in­ves­ti­ga­tions last week. On his re­lease, Ma­haraj called for an apol­o­gy and ques­tioned how he was go­ing to move on now that his char­ac­ter had been smeared.

The oth­er em­ploy­ee was re­cent­ly trans­ferred to the Char­lotte Street branch of IAM due to staff short­age, com­pa­ny of­fi­cials said. The man has been em­ployed at the com­pa­ny for the past four months and was trans­ferred about a month ago. Po­lice said they have al­so seized porno­graph­ic ma­te­r­i­al dur­ing their in­ves­ti­ga­tion.

Ban­field, of Mc Carthy Street, Can­taro Vil­lage, San­ta Cruz, was last seen leav­ing her work place–RBL's In­de­pen­dence Square branch–around 4 pm last Mon­day. In a tele­phone con­ver­sa­tion with her moth­er Sher­ry-Ann Lopez around that time, Ban­field had said she was leav­ing work to pur­chase items at the same store (IAM) she was even­tu­al­ly found in. Lopez said she would nor­mal­ly drop off and pick up her daugh­ter from work, but she (Ban­field) de­cid­ed to trav­el on Mon­day.

Ban­field's body was dis­cov­ered hid­den un­der some box­es in com­pa­ny's third- floor store­room around 1.30 pm on Thurs­day by em­ploy­ees who were search­ing for the source of a strong de­com­pos­ing scent they be­lieved was a dead rat. Ban­field's purse and shop­ping bags were found near to her body.

Ban­field will be buried to­day fol­low­ing a church ser­vice at the Sev­enth Day Ad­ven­tist Church at Priz­gar Road, San Juan.