Young butch­er Zaid Al­ladin was nev­er known to fre­quent the sea, much less to take the per­ilous jour­ney from Trinidad to Venezuela.

 So how did he end up ship­wrecked along Bo­ca de la Ser­pi­ente—a treach­er­ous strait ly­ing be­tween Ica­cos Point in south­west Trinidad and the north coast of Venezuela.

This is what his el­der broth­er Faizie Al­ladin wants to find out. 

Walk­ing along the de­sert­ed beach at Gran Chemin, Moru­ga, with his wife Veena yes­ter­day, Al­ladin said he did not know if Zaid, 26, was dead or alive. Al­ladin is al­so un­sure whether Zaid was even part of the ship­wreck at the Bo­ca de la Ser­pi­ente.

“We don’t know what is go­ing on. No­body has been telling us any­thing. All we know is that to­day makes it eight days since he dis­ap­peared,” Al­ladin ex­plained.

He said his younger broth­er was a butch­er by pro­fes­sion and al­so sup­plied gas to fish­er­folk in Moru­ga.

“He used to be trans­port­ing gas for whoso­ev­er own the boat. The con­tain­ers were al­ways in the back of his van. I nev­er know him to be leav­ing Trinidad to go to Venezuela. We don’t know what hap­pened. We not hear­ing any­thing. We are try­ing to find out,” Al­ladin said.

Dis­traught and feel­ing emp­ty, Al­ladin went to the rel­a­tives of Rishi “Short­man” See­lochan, 38, and Vi­jayanand “Pro­mo” Too­phanie, 40, who are al­so miss­ing at sea, but their rel­a­tives had no in­for­ma­tion to give.

“We have been ask­ing boat­men about what hap­pened. They say­ing they do not know any­thing. I have a part­ner by the ice fac­to­ry, he told me to buy gas and we will make a tour to search, but I nev­er ride a boat and I am not go­ing out at sea,” Al­ladin said.

He not­ed that the T&T Coast Guard had is­sued a state­ment last week say­ing a boat had sunk with Trinida­di­ans and Venezue­lans but he was not sure if Al­ladin was part of that crew.

“I hear­ing ru­mours but we have noth­ing from the of­fi­cial chan­nel,” he said.

Al­ladin said there were al­so re­ports that four Venezue­lans, in­clud­ing a four-year-old child, had died at sea but that too is un­ver­i­fied.

“We just want some clo­sure. We need to find out what hap­pened,” Al­ladin said.

His wife Veena called on the au­thor­i­ties to find out.

“We are call­ing on the Min­istry of For­eign Af­fairs to li­aise with the Venezue­lan Con­sulate to find out what hap­pened,” she added. 

Ear­li­er this week, Venezue­lan me­dia El Per­iódi­co del Delta, from Tu­cu­pi­ta, re­port­ed that two peo­ple, in­clud­ing a Trinida­di­an man, were res­cued by mem­bers of the in­dige­nous Warao tribe.

The re­port said Luis Gómez and Er­ic Rosario had been spot­ted float­ing at sea hold­ing on to a large plas­tic con­tain­er. They said they left Trinidad in a boat on Sep­tem­ber 29 with 17 peo­ple on board. Two bod­ies have al­so been found but there are no con­firmed iden­ti­ties. 

On Sun­day, the T&T Coast Guard stat­ed that a ves­sel had left Trinidad on Oc­to­ber 1 with 25 peo­ple on board. That boat is be­lieved to have sunk in Venezue­lan wa­ters. Twen­ty peo­ple were still miss­ing but there was no con­fir­ma­tion that Zaid, See­lochan or Too­phanie were on board. 

Any­one with in­fo can con­tact Crimestop­pers at 800-TIPS.