Ke­jan Haynes

Lead Ed­i­tor - News­gath­er­ing

The man seen on CCTV footage be­ing washed away in a flood-swollen drain on Mon­day evening was found dead yes­ter­day, al­most four kilo­me­tres from where he was last seen alive.

Af­ter an hours-long search, the Hunters’ Search and Res­cue Team found the man’s body tan­gled in some bush­es in the riv­er be­hind Print­eryville Road, just off O’Meara Road, near the Con­sol­i­dat­ed Bis­cuit (T’Dad) Ltd fac­to­ry.

In fact, mem­bers of the T&T Po­lice Ser­vice, DMO and un­der­tak­ers had to pass through res­i­dents’ homes to get to the riv­er to re­move the body.

Speak­ing af­ter­wards, the hunters from the search team said the ter­rain wasn’t easy.

“We ex­pe­ri­enced rough ter­rain where there were some con­stric­tions and some deep spots where we had to pass through waist-high wa­ter. We had to go through some big grass but this is our thing, this is what we do,” said Ron­nie Singh, who was part of the search par­ty who found the body.

“The most im­por­tant thing is bring­ing clo­sure to the fam­i­ly and the loved ones so they can find the body and move on,” added John­ny Ma­haraj, who co-or­di­nat­ed the search.

The con­di­tions in the drain were cre­at­ed af­ter rains fell for ap­prox­i­mate­ly three hours in east Trinidad on Mon­day.

The or­deal start­ed on Mon­day af­ter­noon on the cor­ner of Car­rac­ci­o­lo Av­enue and Ameer­ali Av­enue in Mal­abar.

A res­i­dent’s se­cu­ri­ty cam­eras cap­tured the hor­ri­fy­ing last mo­ments of the vic­tim. The video cir­cu­lat­ing on so­cial me­dia showed the man reach­ing for the pro­tec­tive rail­ing in a des­per­ate bid to save him­self as he was washed down the drain.

The head of the Ather­ton fam­i­ly was dri­ving in a white van and stopped to ren­der as­sis­tance on see­ing the sit­u­a­tion. How­ev­er, by the time he got to the drain, the man had dis­ap­peared un­der­wa­ter and didn’t resur­face.

The fam­i­ly, said to be res­i­dents of the area, re­called they heard his head hit the con­crete as they sought to as­sist him and from there they feared the worst.

Once the video hit so­cial me­dia, Ari­ma Cen­tral coun­cil­lor Shel­don “Fish” Gar­cia and a team of vol­un­teers start­ed a search. From 6 pm Mon­day, they scoured the drains in the area, still filled with wa­ter. By 10 pm they called off their search, vow­ing to start again yes­ter­day morn­ing. D’Abadie/O’Meara MP Lisa Mor­ris-Ju­lian called in the Hunter’s Search and Res­cue team, along with the TTPS and the dis­as­ter man­age­ment unit from the ODPM, who all re­sumed the search around 9 am yes­ter­day.

Ari­ma MP Pen­ne­lope Beck­les al­so checked in on the res­cue ef­forts at one point.

The body, which is yet to be iden­ti­fied, was found at 12.45 pm.

Coun­cil­lor Gar­cia said up to late last night no one had come for­ward to re­port a miss­ing per­son or iden­ti­fy the body. It’s be­lieved the vic­tim is a home­less man but of­fi­cials will now have to de­ter­mine his iden­ti­ty.

“Peo­ple were spec­u­lat­ing, be­cause there’s a va­grant who sleeps un­der the bridge up on Carib Av­enue but up to last night (Mon­day) he was seen walk­ing the road,” Gar­cia said.

MP Mor­ris-Ju­lian thanked the teams who took part in the search, in­clud­ing the fam­i­ly who tried to pull the vic­tim from the drain. She called on those in need to seek a safe place to shel­ter.

“This is very trag­ic. I just want to urge per­sons who may be in sim­i­lar sit­u­a­tion to reach out to pro­vide shel­ters at least dur­ing the rainy sea­son,” she said.

“My heart goes out to the Ather­ton fam­i­ly who tried to help.”

This is the third per­son in just over a year to die in flood­wa­ters.

In Au­gust 2022, There­sa Lynch, 44, was swept away in wa­ters in Lopinot. Ear­li­er that month, An­nan Boysie, 40, died when his van was pushed off the road and in­to a riv­er which flows along­side the M1 Ring Road in Ste Madeleine.