Rel­a­tives of Joan­na Díaz, the Venezue­lan mi­grant whose de­com­posed body was found in a la­trine be­hind a house in Preysal ear­li­er this month, are anx­ious for T&T’s bor­ders to be re­opened so that her ash­es can be re­turned to her home­land.

Her body was cre­mat­ed fol­low­ing a fu­ner­al ser­vice at the JE Guide Fu­ner­al Home and Cre­ma­to­ri­um, in San Fer­nan­do, on Sep­tem­ber 10. Rel­a­tives hope to take her ash­es to her moth­er, in Tu­cu­pi­ta.

Díaz was last seen alive at around 4 pm when she left her home to fo to San Fer­nan­do. The 33-year-old’s fam­i­ly be­gan to wor­ry when she did not re­turn home and could not be reached on her cell phone.

Eight days lat­er, on Sep­tem­ber 5, the fam­i­ly’s worst fear ma­te­ri­al­ized when the po­lice called to in­form them that Díaz was dead. Her ex-boyfriend led of­fi­cers to the place where they found the body in San­ta Clara, Preysal.

Calvin Ba­hadur has been charged with her mur­der.

Díaz came to T&T af­ter start­ing a re­la­tion­ship with a man she met on Face­book. In ear­ly 2019, he bought a tick­et for her and her 13-year-old daugh­ter to trav­el from Tu­cu­pi­ta by boat to the Trinidad. How­ev­er, the re­la­tion­ship end­ed in Feb­ru­ary of this year.

“She walked away from that man a long time ago. We knew about the ha­rass­ment, but we did not think that he would be ca­pa­ble of this mon­stros­i­ty, or any­thing we learned about from oth­er peo­ple’s com­ments, ” said Kar­la Sánchez, Díaz’s cousin.

She said Díaz sent mon­ey to her moth­er in Venezuela and worked at a shoe store in Trinidad. In Tu­cu­pi­ta, she was an em­ploy­ee of the Aníbal Ro­jas Pérez Bo­li­var­i­an High School.

Yosse Cedeño, a friend of Díaz, said neigh­bours re­port­ed hear­ing a young woman’s screams from a house in San­ta Clara.

“I post­ed some pho­tos of her on Face­book be­cause she was miss­ing, and a girl who lives near­by told me that she had heard screams. I called her cousin im­me­di­ate­ly,” said Cedeño.

Rel­a­tives called the po­lice

“They sent a unit but the po­lice could not en­ter the house be­cause they did not have a search war­rant. If they had, they could have saved her,” said Cedeño.

In Tu­cu­pi­ta, Yu­raima Sánchez, moth­er of Díaz, ap­pealed for help to lo­cate her daugh­ter, ac­cord­ing to a re­port in El Per­iódi­co del Delta .

“The an­guished moth­er, vis­i­bly ex­haust­ed by not be­ing able to sleep dur­ing these eight days that have elapsed since the dis­ap­pear­ance, asks the per­son who al­leged­ly has her daugh­ter in his pow­er, to re­turn her safe and sound,”wrote José Gre­go­rio Ruiz.

How­ev­er, on Sep­tem­ber 5 every­thing changed.

“The po­lice called us and we went to San­ta Clara. There were at least ten po­lice pa­trols. Lat­er, the coro­ner ar­rived and they took the body that was in a sep­tic tank, ”said Sánchez.

The body was iden­ti­fied by a scar on the arm and an item of jew­el­ry.