Ke­jan Haynes

Lead Ed­i­tor-News­gath­er­ing

ke­jan.haynes@guardian.co.tt

A Caribbean Air­lines Lim­it­ed (CAL) pi­lot has been re­port­ed miss­ing. Po­lice said 59-year-old Daniel Kawall of Palm Road, Val­sayn North, went miss­ing along with his ve­hi­cle, a Toy­ota Hilux reg­is­tered TCM 1787, on Wednes­day, Sep­tem­ber 3. His fam­i­ly said his last com­mu­ni­ca­tion with them was at 5 pm that day. Calls to his phone have since gone straight to voice­mail, prompt­ing rel­a­tives to file a miss­ing per­son re­port with po­lice.

A res­i­dent of Cas­cade told re­porters neigh­bours dis­cov­ered Kawall’s ve­hi­cle parked near their home. The man, who asked to be iden­ti­fied on­ly as Chris, said the Toy­ota was on the op­po­site side of the road on an em­bank­ment, par­tial­ly off the road, around the cor­ner from his apart­ment. He re­port­ed it to po­lice Thurs­day morn­ing af­ter notic­ing it had been left there overnight.

“When I called the po­lice, they said they had no bul­letin on the ve­hi­cle be­ing stolen,” Chris said. “No one came yes­ter­day (Thurs­day) evening, and when I checked this morn­ing, the ve­hi­cle was not there. I as­sumed the po­lice had tak­en it.”

When po­lice vis­it­ed they said they had not moved the ve­hi­cle.

Res­i­dents are as­sist­ing po­lice to see who may have moved the ve­hi­cle us­ing their neigh­bour­hood watch and CCTV cam­eras near­by.

Val­lence Ramb­harat, head of the Hunters Search and Res­cue joined the search on Fri­day at an area called Spring­bank. Ramb­harat said his team is con­duct­ing search­es in the area, nav­i­gat­ing steep ter­rain and check­ing for any clues that could as­sist the au­thor­i­ties in lo­cat­ing Kawall.

They heard howls and scream­ing, and the dogs re­act­ed, but the ve­hi­cle then turned and left,” Ramb­harat said. “Yes­ter­day morn­ing, the ve­hi­cle was parked in Mount Holo­lo at the side of the road. Res­i­dents had called the po­lice, but no re­sponse came. By 5 am the next day, the ve­hi­cle was gone, and it’s clear the po­lice did not re­move it.”

Po­lice have re­port­ed­ly launched their own in­ter­nal in­ves­ti­ga­tions in­to why the no one act­ed up­on the ini­tial re­port of the ve­hi­cle be­ing parked in the area.

A state­ment from CAL yes­ter­day said, “The board of di­rec­tors, man­age­ment and staff of Caribbean Air­lines are deeply sad­dened by re­ports con­cern­ing our miss­ing col­league Cap­tain Daniel Kawall.

“Our thoughts and prayers are with his fam­i­ly, friends and col­leagues dur­ing this dif­fi­cult time.”