Rhon­dor Dowlat

One pathol­o­gist was able to com­plete the au­top­sies on nine bod­ies in un­der four hours at the Foren­sic Sci­ence Cen­tre on Mon­day, ac­cord­ing to a state­ment from the Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Min­istry.

The state­ment was is­sued in re­sponse to me­dia re­ports which stat­ed that there was a de­lay in the com­ple­tion of au­top­sies of mur­der vic­tims for sev­er­al hours which added to the emo­tion­al trau­ma of rel­a­tives.

Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter Ed­mund Dil­lon read a sim­i­lar state­ment in the Sen­ate yes­ter­day.

Ac­cord­ing to the re­lease, the pathol­o­gist ros­tered for du­ty, Dr Es­lyn Mc­Don­ald-Bur­ris, no­ti­fied the FSC that she was ill around 10 am and arrange­ments were made to sched­ule Dr Hughvon DesVi­gnes to work.

DesVi­gnes, who was in To­ba­go, was con­tact­ed and trav­elled to Trinidad.

"FSC per­son­nel ad­vised the T&T Po­lice Ser­vice (TTPS) per­son­nel present that au­top­sies would be con­duct­ed from ap­prox­i­mate­ly 12 noon and apol­o­gised in ad­vance for the de­lay. In the in­ter­im, rel­a­tives of the de­ceased were in­ter­viewed and the nec­es­sary pa­per­work and pre­lim­i­nary pro­ce­dures were com­plet­ed by FSC per­son­nel and TTPS of­fi­cers," the re­lease stat­ed.

It dis­closed that post mortem ex­am­i­na­tions were done on nine bod­ies and were com­plet­ed by 3.45 p.m. The re­lease added that all bod­ies were re­leased to rel­a­tives of the de­ceased by 4 pm.

How­ev­er, sources at the FSC said yes­ter­day that the au­top­sies were con­clud­ed "well lat­er than 4 pm. Af­ter 6 pm, min­utes to 7 pm."

There are three pathol­o­gists as­signed to the FSC–Des Vi­gnes, Mc Don­ald-Bur­ris and Dr Valery Alexan­drov.

Alexan­drov is cur­rent­ly on va­ca­tion leave.

"The three pathol­o­gists in­ter­change on a week­ly ba­sis, mean­ing that Des Vi­gnes will be on du­ty for one week, then Mc­Don­ald-Bur­ris for the next week and then Alexan­drov for the oth­er week," the source said.

One rel­a­tive of a mur­der vic­tim, who had to wait for hours on Mon­day, said yes­ter­day that he left the FSC at about 3.30 pm on Mon­day and left sev­er­al fam­i­lies wait­ing.

On Mon­day, rel­a­tives of mur­der vic­tims ex­pressed dis­gust over the de­lay to get au­top­sies start­ed. They were told to get there for 8 am.

Some of them ar­rived at the cen­tre from as ear­ly 6 am.

They al­so com­plained about a stench at the FSC which was blamed on a mal­func­tion­ing freez­er.