Stephon Nicholas

To­ba­go Cor­re­spon­dent

Shan­non Miller, the step­fa­ther of mur­dered two-year-old An­ge­lo To­bias-Plaza, ap­peared in court on Mon­day, charged with the child’s mur­der. The mat­ter has been ad­journed to No­vem­ber 30.

As the case moves for­ward, an of­fi­cial in­volved in the mul­ti-agency search for An­ge­lo from the first day of his dis­ap­pear­ance said he be­lieves more peo­ple should face charges in con­nec­tion with the mat­ter.

In an in­ter­view with Guardian Me­dia yes­ter­day, the of­fi­cial, who spoke on con­di­tion of anonymi­ty, said there was an el­e­ment of their probe that he felt was not ad­dressed in the ear­ly stages.

An­ge­lo was re­port­ed miss­ing from his sea­side home at Cam­bridge Trace, Good­wood, around 7.30 pm on May 11. 

Up­on re­ceiv­ing the re­port, po­lice of­fi­cers joined An­ge­lo’s moth­er Kali­fah To­bias, his step­fa­ther Shan­non Miller and oth­er vil­lagers in search­ing for the child in the dark­ness.

The search ef­forts shift­ed to the sea the fol­low­ing morn­ing as a per­son re­port­ed­ly briefly spot­ted the child’s body in Good­wood Bay around 6.30 am.

On May 15, po­lice de­tained An­ge­lo’s moth­er and her part­ner for ques­tion­ing. Sev­er­al oth­er per­sons of in­ter­est were al­so held and lat­er re­leased.

On May 23, Miller was charged for An­ge­lo’s mur­der while To­bias was re­leased.

Chief Sec­re­tary Far­ley Au­gus­tine on Mon­day crit­i­cised the po­lice for their ap­proach in the first 48 hours of An­ge­lo’s dis­ap­pear­ance.

The of­fi­cial said, “On a per­son­al lev­el, I will agree with the Chief Sec­re­tary, but on a pro­fes­sion­al lev­el, I think the pro­ce­dures have to be fol­lowed.”

He said of­fi­cers need­ed to show em­pa­thy to An­ge­lo’s par­ents, adding that it would have been em­bar­rass­ing to de­tain them and then the body even­tu­al­ly float­ed up.

The ex­pe­ri­enced of­fi­cial said it is com­mon knowl­edge in in­stances of drown­ing that bod­ies even­tu­al­ly sur­face around day three.

“If you re­alise, af­ter the third day, the in­ves­ti­ga­tion took a dif­fer­ent di­rec­tion. You have to show that em­pa­thy be­cause you don’t know at that point in time, even though you may spec­u­late.”

He ar­gued, how­ev­er, that if foul play was not ini­tial­ly con­sid­ered, the is­sue of neg­li­gence should have been probed.

Asked whether he was sur­prised on­ly one per­son was charged, the of­fi­cial said yes.

On the is­sue of re­sources, the of­fi­cial said the au­thor­i­ties had al­most every­thing at their dis­pos­al.

“The De­fence Force, the po­lice, fire ser­vice, we start­ed with a land search—we had enough per­son­nel for that.

“Then it move to the sea, you see Coast Guard step in, fish­er­men step in, drones, divers. It is not a case of lim­it­ed re­sources.

“In hind­sight, every­body is say­ing you should have do this and that, but at the time no­body knew ex­cept the per­sons who were in­volved.”

Asked about the Coast Guard of­fi­cers be­ing on foot pa­trol through­out the search, the of­fi­cial said, “That is a nor­mal thing for us now. We just over­look that. We know Coast Guard don’t have those boats in To­ba­go. It is an on­go­ing is­sue.”

Mean­while, Snr Supt Rod­hill Kirk de­fend­ed the in­ves­tiga­tive team, say­ing they act­ed with­in the pa­ra­me­ters of the law.

Kirk said he re­spect­ed the opin­ion of Au­gus­tine, but said con­sul­ta­tion could have been done with of­fi­cers to pro­vide fur­ther clar­i­ty.

He added, “The best per­son to ask about build­ing a house is a car­pen­ter. The best per­son to ask is the po­lice... There isn’t any­thing that could have been done dif­fer­ent­ly.”

Asked whether An­ge­lo’s moth­er was ful­ly cleared by po­lice, he said, “We will con­tin­ue our in­ves­ti­ga­tion, but for now the DPP said to re­lease her."