Sascha Wil­son

The search for 39-year-old Meris­sa Ed­wards cul­mi­nat­ed in tragedy on Mon­day, af­ter her de­com­pos­ing body was found in a drain in Cou­va.

The dis­cov­ery was made by a search par­ty short­ly be­fore 6 pm in a grassy area off Brick­field Road. The search par­ty, com­pris­ing the Hunters Search and Res­cue team led by Val­lence Ramb­harat, an off-du­ty po­lice­man, her broth­ers and a fam­i­ly friend, had been search­ing the Freeport/Wa­ter­loo/Cou­va area.

Po­lice be­lieve Ed­wards was mur­dered by her boyfriend, Sime­on Roopc­hand, who then took his own life.

Ed­wards lived at John Eli Road Ex­ten­sion, Freeport, while Roopc­hand lived at Bank Vil­lage, Cara­pichaima.

About two hours be­fore her body was found, Ed­wards’ sis­ter Lisa told Guardian Me­dia they were still cling­ing on to hope she was alive. In a tele­phone in­ter­view, she said Ed­wards had planned to end her re­la­tion­ship with her 51-year-old boyfriend.

How­ev­er, she said she did not think her sis­ter’s life was in dan­ger, as he was not a vi­o­lent per­son.

“This is very shock­ing,” Lisa said.

Ed­wards, an ad­min­is­tra­tive clerk at the Fac­ul­ty of Med­ical Sci­ences at the Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies in St Au­gus­tine, had been miss­ing for over a week.

Ed­wards’ boyfriend, the last per­son she was seen with, was found hang­ing from a tree in a forest­ed area off Damien Road in Tabaquite on Sat­ur­day.

Lisa said her sis­ter was with Roopc­hand for about two years but she had bro­ken off the re­la­tion­ship a cou­ple times. While he would ac­cuse her sis­ter of be­ing un­faith­ful, Lisa said he was not abu­sive.

“He was a re­al nor­mal, nice per­son. I don’t think I ever hear him curse,” she added.

She said he even went with them to To­ba­go last month.

Ed­wards was last seen by her rel­a­tives on Sep­tem­ber 18 when she left her home with Roopc­hand.

The fol­low­ing morn­ing, Ed­wards’ 16-year-old daugh­ter re­alised that her moth­er nev­er came home. Roopc­hand vis­it­ed Ed­wards’ home that day around 6 am.

Lisa said Roopc­hand usu­al­ly took Ed­wards to work and her daugh­ter to school. When rel­a­tives in­quired about Ed­wards’ where­abouts, he claimed he dropped her on the high­way by a track which leads to her home.

She said Roopc­hand dropped Ed­wards’ daugh­ter to school and even went to her work­place to look for her. She said they made sev­er­al calls to Ed­wards’ cell phone with­out suc­cess and What­sApp Mes­sen­ger showed that Ed­wards was last on­line around 1.39 am on Mon­day (Sep­tem­ber 19).

How­ev­er, Lisa ex­plained that when they got ac­cess to her sis­ter’s phone’s GPS and be­gan ask­ing Roopc­hand ques­tions, he changed his sto­ry. She said he kept in­sist­ing that he did not know her where­abouts.

Roopc­hand’s last com­mu­ni­ca­tion with them was via What­sApp Mes­sen­ger on Tues­day (Sep­tem­ber 20) around 9.36 am. She said he texted that they had ru­ined his life and he was go­ing to end it.

Lat­er that day, his car was found in Tabaquite not far from where his body was found.

Ed­wards is the sixth of 11 sib­lings but two of her sis­ters are de­ceased. Lisa said her fam­i­ly is hurt­ing. Their 69-year-old moth­er keeps break­ing down. Their fa­ther will turn 72 next month.

She thanked the po­lice and every­one who had been search­ing for Ed­wards, giv­ing sup­port and ex­tend­ing best wish­es to them.