RHON­DOR DOWLAT

Se­nior Re­porter

rhon­dor.dowlat@guardian.co.tt

A body found in a shal­low grave in Waller­field yes­ter­day af­ter­noon is be­lieved to be that of Maria Paul, 19, of Plan­ta­tion Road, Va­len­cia, who was re­port­ed miss­ing on Sep­tem­ber 12.

Dur­ing a search for her, around 2 pm mem­bers of the Hunters Search and Res­cue Team led by Sham­sudeen Ayube, found a per­son­al item in the dirt at Bab­wah Av­enue in Waller­field.

The po­lice were sub­se­quent­ly called in.

Of­fi­cers of the Crime Scene In­ves­ti­ga­tion Unit re­spond­ed, a shal­low grave was dug up, and Paul’s body was found.

Six days ago, an ar­ti­cle of cloth­ing be­long­ing to Paul was found in a forest­ed area in Va­len­cia.

Paul’s moth­er, Ria Ho­sein Thomp­son, said she last spoke with her daugh­ter via video call on Sep­tem­ber 11 around 11 pm.

Paul told her moth­er that she was go­ing to meet her boyfriend of 18 months, a 41-year-old man at his job, af­ter which they were go­ing to lime.

On Sep­tem­ber 17, the man dropped Paul’s clothes at her par­ents’ home.

He said that he had not seen Paul since Sep­tem­ber 11.

Lat­er that day, he called her par­ents and said that he did his own in­ves­ti­ga­tion and found out that she was “by a man in ei­ther Las Lo­mas or Brazil.”

Paul’s moth­er claimed that a month ago a man and a woman al­leged­ly held Paul cap­tive and beat her. The woman was al­leged to be Aliyah San­to who was re­cent­ly killed.

Paul man­aged to es­cape and ran to a rel­a­tive’s house where a re­port was made at the Va­len­cia Po­lice Post.

Ac­cord­ing to re­ports, this was not the first time Paul went miss­ing.

In 2020 and 2021, Paul re­port­ed­ly ran away from home but lat­er re­turned.