KEVON FELMINE

Se­nior Re­porter

kevon.felmine@guardian.co.tt

His fam­i­ly’s prayers and of­fer of a re­ward for the safe re­turn of the TT RideShare dri­ver were all in vain as his bloat­ed corpse was found in the Pe­nal for­est yes­ter­day.

The dis­cov­ery was made af­ter search­es by Hunters Search and Res­cue (HSR), the An­ti-Kid­nap­ping Unit, rel­a­tives, friends and Charles’ col­leagues from Trinidad Sys­tems Lim­it­ed.

Search­es fo­cused on an area off Ram­lal Trace Ex­ten­sion, where Charles, 32, of In­di­an Walk, Moru­ga, dropped off a pas­sen­ger be­fore he went miss­ing last Tues­day.

HSR Cap­tain Val­lence Ramb­harat said the search be­gan around 8 am in the hilly forest­ed ter­rain. As they as­cend­ed a hill around 9.20 am, they found a corpse with clothes sim­i­lar to what Charles was wear­ing when he went miss­ing.

Po­lice said the body was clad in a grey po­lo shirt, long blue jeans, black socks and blue slip­pers with the hands bound in front with tie straps.

Snr Supt Sean Dhilpaul and Supt Steve Per­sad led a team of de­tec­tives from the Homi­cide Bu­reau of In­ves­ti­ga­tions: Re­gion Three to the scene for fur­ther en­quiries.

Ramb­harat said the HSR asked the po­lice for as­sis­tance to cov­er the area as part of their search based on in­for­ma­tion they re­ceived.

“We just fol­lowed the road. We met the last house and en­tered the for­est. It was about 1000 me­tres away from where the body was lo­cat­ed.

“I think the the­o­ry must be that he le­git­i­mate­ly went to pick up a pas­sen­ger in San Fer­nan­do and bring them to this area, and while here, some­thing oc­curred that would have re­sult­ed in his death,” Ramb­harat said.

Rel­a­tives re­port­ed Charles miss­ing last Wednes­day af­ter he did not re­turn home and all calls to his phone af­ter 9 pm went to voice­mail.

Po­lice said he left home around 6 am Tues­day in his white Toy­ota Yaris Cross SUV for work in Port-of-Spain. His par­ents said he called around 1.30 pm and told his moth­er, Mar­garet, he was tak­ing up his sec­ond job as a RideShare dri­ver.

He was ex­pect­ed home at 7 pm, but when he did not re­turn, his par­ents be­gan call­ing his phone, which went unan­swered.

In­ves­ti­ga­tors said some­one made a $500 with­draw­al from Charles’ bank ac­count at an ATM at a Quik­shoppe in Port-of-Spain around 8.30 pm that night. Po­lice re­cov­ered his car in Va­len­cia the fol­low­ing day.

Charles pur­chased the SUV three months ago. His broth­er, Ro­nande, said when he fin­ished work in Port-of-Spain he worked as a TTRS dri­ver to make some ex­tra mon­ey.

Ro­nande said TTRS dri­vers share their lo­ca­tion with oth­ers if they feel un­safe dur­ing a job but the plat­form is safer for the pas­sen­gers than the dri­vers who must pro­vide a cer­tifi­cate of char­ac­ter, proof of ad­dress and iden­ti­fi­ca­tion to join the ser­vice.

“That is some­thing that should be im­ple­ment­ed mov­ing for­ward, so this can nev­er hap­pen again to some­body who is com­ing out to make an hon­est dol­lar to pro­vide for their fam­i­lies,” he said.

“To the per­sons who did this, I just want you all to know that you all left some­body with two chil­dren to see about with­out a fa­ther.

“I do not know how that will make you all feel, but as a hu­man that will nev­er make some­body feel good. Just as those chil­dren have par­ents and a fa­ther, you all do too, and jus­tice will be served.”