RALPH BAN­WARIE

Free­lance Con­trib­u­tor

Po­lice are now try­ing to iden­ti­fy a body that washed ashore at Ba­lan­dra beach yes­ter­day, the sec­ond body to be dis­cov­ered on a beach along the north east coast over the week­end.

The dis­cov­ery was made by a vil­lager around 8.30 am.

The man was re­port­ed­ly husk­ing dry co­conuts at his prop­er­ty when he was at­tract­ed by a flock of cor­beaux who were feed­ing on ob­ject on the shore and a foul stench in the area.

The man went to the area where he no­ticed the cor­beaux and re­port­ed see­ing the de­com­pos­ing body of a male ly­ing on the shore. He be­lieved the body to be a per­son of Venezue­lan ori­gin.

The man re­turned to the vil­lage and made a re­port at the con­tact­ed the Matu­ra Po­lice Sta­tion.

Po­lice of­fi­cers, led by In­sp Sankar, Sgt Hazel, PCs Ra­goonath and Fran­cis re­spond­ed.

The face was un­recog­nis­able due to the state of de­com­po­si­tion and the right leg was miss­ing.

Po­lice spec­u­late the body could be that of one of the Venezue­lan na­tion­als who were re­port­ed­ly on a pirogue that was tar­get­ed by a US Navy strike off Venezuela last week.

The ves­sel was al­leged­ly be­ing com­man­deered by 11 mem­bers of the Tren de Aragua who were trans­port­ing drugs.

Dis­trict Med­ical Of­fi­cer Dr Bel­grave or­dered the body re­moved to San­gre Grande Hos­pi­tal mor­tu­ary pend­ing a post­mortem.

On Fri­day, an­oth­er body was dis­cov­ered on the coast­line at Cumana.

That body was al­so found in de­com­pos­ing stage, with right hand and foot miss­ing, a piece of cloth­ing around the neck and burns about the body.