Eliz­a­beth Gon­za­les

To­ba­go Cor­re­spon­dent

The au­top­sies for Sarah Smith and her chil­dren, Phoenix and Gen­uine, are sched­uled for Mon­day, sources at the Scar­bor­ough Gen­er­al Hos­pi­tal Mor­tu­ary have con­firmed.

The three were found dead in a de­com­mis­sioned WASA tank in Par­latu­vi­er, To­ba­go, af­ter be­ing re­port­ed miss­ing days be­fore.

A foul odour from the tank led po­lice to their bod­ies dur­ing a search op­er­a­tion on Sep­tem­ber 10. Smith, orig­i­nal­ly from Trinidad, had moved to To­ba­go seek­ing a bet­ter life.

Her moth­er Jacque­line Wayne, who had re­port­ed her miss­ing, said she had be­gun to no­tice un­usu­al be­hav­iour from Sarah, in­clud­ing com­plaints of hear­ing voic­es and walk­ing naked through the com­mu­ni­ty.

Sources told Guardian Me­dia yes­ter­day that Wayne, who helped in the search, was still strug­gling to come to terms with their deaths.

She has been un­reach­able since her in­ter­view with Guardian Me­dia hours af­ter the dis­cov­ery.

On Wednes­day, sources re­vealed a foren­sic back­log has de­vel­oped in To­ba­go, with sev­en cas­es await­ing au­top­sies.

These in­clude Smith and her chil­dren; Nicholas Mitchell and Bran­don Ed­wards, who were killed by gun­men in Ar­gyle over the week­end of Sep­tem­ber 21-22; along with Razeen Quashie and Ha­keem An­der­son, who died in a po­lice-in­volved shoot­ing on Sep­tem­ber 16.

Guardian Me­dia could not con­firm if all sev­en au­top­sies will be done on Mon­day.

This back­log, ac­cord­ing to the of­fi­cial, is the largest in To­ba­go since the dis­cov­ery of 14 bod­ies and skele­tal re­mains from a boat that drift­ed in­to To­ba­go in 2021.

In­for­ma­tion from the source sug­gests that the cur­rent de­lays are hap­pen­ing be­cause To­ba­go does not have a res­i­dent pathol­o­gist and those as­signed to the is­land are at odds over the week­ly ros­ter ro­ta­tion.

Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter Fitzger­ald Hinds, who was un­aware of the is­sue, promised to in­ves­ti­gate on Wednes­day. He could not be reached for an up­date yes­ter­day.

The act­ing di­rec­tor of the Foren­sic Sci­ence Cen­tre, Der­rick Sankar, de­clined to com­ment.

Sec­re­tary for the Di­vi­sion of Health, Well­ness and So­cial Pro­tec­tion, Faith B Yis­rael, al­so could not be reached for com­ment.