SHANE SU­PERVILLE

Se­nior Re­porter

shane.su­perville@guardian.co.tt

The body of a 70-year-old man was found in Va­len­cia a day af­ter he was re­port­ed miss­ing.

Sources said Va­len­cia po­lice re­ceived a re­port of a body that was found on Cumaca Road, at around 11 am on Sun­day and vis­it­ed the scene.

On ar­rival, they found the body of Gilbert Elias alias 'Cokes' with a wound above his right eye.

Elias' body was found in some bush­es about ten feet away from the road.

A dis­trict med­ical of­fi­cer was called in who de­clared Elias dead at the scene.

In­ves­ti­ga­tors said Elias' green Hon­da Vezel was miss­ing and re­mained un­ac­count­ed for as of Mon­day morn­ing.

When con­tact­ed for com­ment, head of the East­ern Di­vi­sion Snr Supt Christo­pher Pa­ponette said Elias' mur­der was "con­cern­ing", but he vowed that the po­lice were pur­su­ing all leads in the en­quiry.

"This in­ci­dent is be­ing treat­ed with the high­est de­gree of se­ri­ous­ness. Our in­ves­ti­ga­tors are vig­or­ous­ly pur­su­ing all lines of en­quiry, and we are work­ing in con­cert with spe­cial­ist units to es­tab­lish both mo­tive and per­pe­tra­tor,” Snr Supt Pa­ponette told Guardian Me­dia.

He added: "The East­ern Di­vi­sion re­mains stead­fast in its strat­e­gy of in­tel­li­gence-dri­ven polic­ing, the sup­pres­sion of il­le­gal firearms, and the strength­en­ing of com­mu­ni­ty part­ner­ships, all of which are in keep­ing with the Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice’s wider man­date of en­hanc­ing pub­lic safe­ty."