The fam­i­ly and friends of miss­ing fish­er­man Bri­an Cox are call­ing on the po­lice to in­ter­vene as so­cial me­dia re­ports claim he is be­ing held cap­tive in Venezuela.

Cox, a sea­soned fish­er­man, from the Crown Point area, was de­clared miss­ing nine days ago af­ter he did not re­turn from a fish­ing trip.

A rel­a­tive of Cox, Den­nisha Ince, said her fam­i­ly has nei­ther heard from Cox nor re­ceived any in­for­ma­tion about him be­ing held cap­tive in Venezuela.

“Last Sat­ur­day we saw a so­cial me­dia post in­di­cat­ing that he was found and fish­er­men were on their way to Venezuela to re­trieve him. I asked for fur­ther in­for­ma­tion, be­cause we have been in con­stant com­mu­ni­ca­tion with both the po­lice and the coast guard, and were not giv­en that in­for­ma­tion.”

She said she was fur­ther tak­en aback when she saw a night­ly news re­port with a man claim­ing to be a lo­cal fish­er­man who was in con­tact with the Venezue­lan kid­nap­pers.

“If you claim to care about the miss­ing per­son and you know where he is and you have spo­ken to the kid­nap­pers why not go to the po­lice or coast guard or even the fam­i­ly? If it’s a sit­u­a­tion where a ran­som is be­ing sought shouldn’t the fam­i­ly be aware?

Speak­ing on be­half of her fam­i­ly, Ince said: “We would like the po­lice to lo­cate the fish­er­man who claims to have all the in­for­ma­tion.”

A rep­re­sen­ta­tive of the South­west Fish­er­folk As­so­ci­a­tion, No­la John, said the fish­er­man’s fam­i­ly and friends re­main hope­ful.

“In spite of the many search­es both at sea by the mem­bers of the as­so­ci­a­tion and the area rep­re­sen­ta­tive helped us with get­ting aer­i­al search­es, we didn’t find any­thing, they combed the At­lantic and they didn’t see any sign of his boat .”

John said Cox’s friend and fam­i­ly mem­bers held a prayer vig­il for him at Pi­geon Point, hop­ing for his safe re­turn. She too ad­dressed the ru­mours.

“I don’t know where these ru­mours sur­faced from but the as­so­ci­a­tion is in close con­tact with his fam­i­ly and we have not heard of a hostage sit­u­a­tion in Venezuela if that is the case I’m sure the fam­i­ly will do what they must to have him re­turned safe­ly.”

Mean­while, a se­nior Coast Guard of­fi­cial con­firmed that there has been no sight­ing of the miss­ing fish­er­man. The of­fi­cial said there has al­so been no re­port of a hostage sit­u­a­tion in Venezuela.

All calls to the head of To­ba­go Po­lice Jef­frey George for com­ment on the mat­ter went unan­swered.