Jensen La Vende

Four men from the Bras­so Seco area are as­sist­ing po­lice with in­ves­ti­ga­tions af­ter the body of miss­ing one-year-old Sha­nia Amoroso and an adult fe­male be­lieved to be that of her moth­er, Jenelle Gon­za­les, 19, was dis­cov­ered yes­ter­day.

Ac­cord­ing to po­lice, around 10.30 am, of­fi­cers of the North East­ern Di­vi­sion Task Force and mem­bers of the De­fence Force fol­lowed a stench four miles in­to the Bras­so Seco for­est where the two bod­ies were found in duf­fle bags. The child's skull, po­lice said, was se­vere­ly bashed in, while the adult had a gun­shot wound to the head.There was a navel ring on the adult's body but due to the ad­vanced stage of de­com­po­si­tion, po­lice were not able to pos­i­tive­ly iden­ti­fy the body.

Still miss­ing are two oth­er women be­lieved to be the child's grand­moth­er Ir­ma Ram­per­sad, 49, and her 17-year-old daugh­ter Fe­li­cia Gon­za­les, a stu­dent of Mal­abar Sec­ondary School. Po­lice said they will re­sume their search of the for­est to­day.

In a tele­phone in­ter­view with the T&T Guardian yes­ter­day, one of Ram­per­sad's six daugh­ters iden­ti­fied on­ly as Gail said in­ves­ti­ga­tors con­firmed that her niece Sha­nia was found dead. Gail said while she has been prepar­ing for some­thing like this since her rel­a­tives van­ished from their Bleu Road, Bras­so Seco, Paria, home, two weeks ago, the re­al­i­ty is nonethe­less heart-wrench­ing.

"We spoke to in­ves­ti­ga­tors and what they said was that they found the body of a child and a woman off a precipice. From what they said, they are sure that it's the ba­by, but they don't know who the woman is. They said the body was too bad­ly de­com­posed, but she had a navel ring," Gail said.She was not sure if her moth­er or her sis­ter wore a navel ring. Gail said she had the hard and painful task of gath­er­ing fam­i­ly mem­bers to­geth­er to break the news be­fore they heard it from the me­dia.

"Right now we feel­ing ah how. I don't even know how to break the news to them. I pre­pared my­self from the be­gin­ning for this eh, but to see it come true now... hm­mm, I just don't know," Gail said.

Since the fam­i­ly van­ished, there have been ru­mours sur­round­ing the rea­son for their dis­ap­pear­ance. One such ru­mour is that Ram­per­sad might have seen or heard who killed a fel­low res­i­dent in the area in Au­gust. An­oth­er was that one of the teenaged girls was in­volved in a re­la­tion­ship with an es­caped crim­i­nal who po­lice claimed had threat­ened fam­i­ly mem­bers in Va­len­cia if they did not help him hide from po­lice.

That man, po­lice said, is be­lieved to have been be­hind the fam­i­ly's dis­ap­pear­ance and now death.Since the dis­ap­pear­ance, rel­a­tives and res­i­dents of the rur­al vil­lage in the north coast of Trinidad have made pas­sion­ate pleas for the safe re­lease of the fam­i­ly mem­bers whom they re­ferred to as "in­no­cent ones. "

One vil­lager who cham­pi­oned the call is the rel­a­tive of one of the four men now in cus­tody. The four men were held at the Bras­so Seco Com­mu­ni­ty Cen­tre for most of the day yes­ter­day be­fore be­ing tak­en to po­lice sta­tions with­in the North East­ern Di­vi­sion.On Wednes­day, four oth­er men who were held by the po­lice and be­lieved to be "peo­ple of in­ter­est" in the dis­ap­pear­ance of the fam­i­ly were all re­leased af­ter spend­ing close to six days in cus­tody.

Fol­low­ing the dis­cov­ery of the body, vil­lagers re­fused to speak on the mat­ter. Some chose in­stead to talk about the de­plorable state of the road to get in and out of the rur­al com­mu­ni­ty.The killings have now tak­en the mur­der toll to 348.

Flash­back

The fam­i­ly mem­bers were last seen alive on Oc­to­ber 26 at their home in Bras­so Seco.In an in­ter­view on Oc­to­ber 31, Ram­per­sad's daugh­ter Nicole Gon­za­les said her moth­er called her on Oc­to­ber 27 to say she was tak­ing her sis­ter Fe­li­cia to the Ari­ma Health Fa­cil­i­ty. Checks by rel­a­tives re­vealed they were not at the health fa­cil­i­ty.

Nicole al­so said her sis­ter Jenelle would nev­er leave home with her one-year-old child Sha­nia with­out pack­ing a ba­by bag for her. Since all the child's be­long­ings were still home, Nicole be­lieved the fam­i­ly was ab­duct­ed. Fol­low­ing the mur­der of Phillip Nor­eiga, 31, on Au­gust 4 in the area, Nicole said her moth­er had been re­ceiv­ing threats by peo­ple who be­lieve she saw some­thing and was not forth­com­ing with the in­for­ma­tion.

She added that she was forced to move out of the area for a while af­ter those threat­en­ing her moth­er promised to kill her chil­dren and burn their house down. "My moth­er is a good woman, she don't lime, she don't drink noth­ing, and my sis­ters are good girls."I re­al­ly need to see my fam­i­ly, that is all I have. We need to see them. They are peace­ful peo­ple."That ba­by in­no­cent, my fam­i­ly not in drugs, in guns or any­thing," Nicole said, her voice break­ing.