The fam­i­ly of 26-year-old fish­er­man Chad Joseph, who is be­lieved to have been killed in a US airstrike, has filed a miss­ing per­son re­port with the Mara­cas Bay Po­lice.

Po­lice said a rel­a­tive re­port­ed that Joseph was last seen around 5 am on April 25, when he said he was go­ing out to fish from his home at Sal­vary Lane, St Michaels Vil­lage, Las Cuevas. He was not seen again.

Of­fi­cers said the rel­a­tive lat­er chose not to com­plete a for­mal state­ment un­til speak­ing with an at­tor­ney.

Gov­ern­ment of­fi­cials have mean­while sought to down­play re­ports link­ing Joseph to the US airstrike. At a press con­fer­ence this week Min­is­ter of For­eign and CARI­COM Af­fairs Sean  Sobers said there is no ev­i­dence that Joseph and an­oth­er man, iden­ti­fied as Rishi Sama­roo, were killed.

“They may very well be miss­ing. We don’t know them to be dead,” Sobers said. “We don’t know that they were the ac­tu­al per­sons on any boats that may have been de­stroyed. In the ab­sence of any ev­i­dence, the best course of ac­tion would be to go to the po­lice and file a miss­ing per­sons re­port.”

Joseph’s rel­a­tives in Las Cuevas have al­ready held a memo­r­i­al ser­vice for him be­liev­ing he died in the at­tack on a  boat off Venezuela on Oc­to­ber 16. The fam­i­ly said Joseph had been strand­ed in Venezuela for sev­er­al months be­fore the in­ci­dent.

In­ves­ti­ga­tions are con­tin­u­ing.