The search for Able Sea­man Kieron Si­mon who dis­ap­peared on Feb­ru­ary 21 off the coast of Grena­da – has re­mained a “sen­si­tive is­sue” and top T&T De­fence Force (TTDF) of­fi­cials have as­sured the ef­fort to lo­cate and re­trieve his body is still un­der­way.

Yes­ter­day marked 65 days since the fa­ther of two re­port­ed­ly dis­ap­peared in a nar­co-sub­ma­rine as it sank, fol­low­ing a drug bust out at sea.

Frus­trat­ed and an­gry over what they de­scribed as the lack of re­spons­es by lo­cal law en­force­ment of­fi­cials as to how the in­ves­ti­ga­tion was pro­ceed­ing, Si­mon’s rel­a­tives said they were con­sid­er­ing seek­ing le­gal ad­vice in a bid to com­pel the au­thor­i­ties to pro­vide them with an­swers.

Crit­i­cis­ing the Min­istry of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty (MNS) for its han­dling of the mat­ter thus far, Kevlon Si­mon lament­ed the en­tire sit­u­a­tion.

Re­spond­ing briefly to ques­tions dur­ing a me­dia brief­ing at the Po­lice Ad­min­is­tra­tion Build­ing, Port-of-Spain last Tues­day – Chief of De­fence Staff, Air Vice Mar­shal, Dar­ryl Daniel con­firmed, “It is a very sen­si­tive mat­ter.”

“Ef­forts con­tin­ue to be made to ad­dress that to the ben­e­fit, in par­tic­u­lar, to the fam­i­ly and coast­guard.”

He moved to re­as­sure Si­mon’s fam­i­ly that, “We con­tin­ue to make all the ef­forts nec­es­sary to en­sure that at the end of the day, all will be at peace.”

Si­mon was fa­ther to two boys aged three and sev­en.

He re­port­ed­ly dis­ap­peared in the se­mi-sub­mersible on Feb­ru­ary 21, as he par­tic­i­pat­ed in a drug bust dur­ing a mul­ti-na­tion­al train­ing ex­er­cise.

The dec­o­rat­ed of­fi­cer was part of a T&T con­tin­gent of se­cu­ri­ty of­fi­cials col­lab­o­rat­ing with re­gion­al coun­ter­parts out at sea, when the sub­ma­rine which con­tained three Colom­bian na­tion­als and a quan­ti­ty of co­caine, al­leged­ly sur­faced.

It was re­port­ed that as Si­mon and an­oth­er of­fi­cer board­ed the ves­sel to ap­pre­hend the al­leged traf­fick­ers and re­cov­er the nar­cotics – some­one pulled the plug, caus­ing the sub­ma­rine’s hatch to close, trap­ping Si­mon on board as the ves­sel sank.

The sec­ond coast­guard of­fi­cer was re­port­ed­ly thrown in­to the sea but was lat­er res­cued.

Kieron joined the T&T Coast Guard (TTCG) in 2009 and has served in var­i­ous posts.