Shane Su­perville

Se­nior Re­porter

shane.su­perville@guardian.co.tt

The younger broth­er of Coast Guard sailor Kieron Si­mon is still call­ing for an­swers and clar­i­ty on the de­tails of his dis­ap­pear­ance, as they ob­served what would have been his 37th birth­day yes­ter­day.

Si­mon was part of a joint drug in­ter­dic­tion ex­er­cise off the coast of Grena­da in Feb­ru­ary, when he re­port­ed­ly board­ed a nar­co sub­ma­rine which lat­er sank while he was still on board.

A sec­ond sailor who was al­so aboard the ves­sel was thrown in­to the wa­ter but was res­cued.

To date, nei­ther the sub­ma­rine nor Si­mon’s body has been re­cov­ered.

Speak­ing with Guardian Me­dia, the younger Si­mon said the fam­i­ly did not mark his broth­er’s birth­day with any cel­e­bra­tions or even qui­et re­flec­tion, as it was a re­minder of the tragedy of his dis­ap­pear­ance.

He al­so lament­ed that de­spite the un­usu­al na­ture of his broth­er’s dis­ap­pear­ance, there had been no sus­tained ef­fort to re­cov­er his body or the ves­sel and again im­plored the au­thor­i­ties to do more to give the fam­i­ly some clo­sure.

He said, “This is a man who had 19 years’ ser­vice to the Coast Guard, and to date, we don’t have any fur­ther de­tails on how this dis­ap­pear­ance hap­pened.

“There was no fu­ner­al, memo­r­i­al or any sort of ser­vice or cer­e­mo­ny to mark the fact that he’s no longer here with us any­more, and I see that as a dis­re­spect to his lega­cy.”

Si­mon said he has strug­gled to get fur­ther de­tails on the en­quiry in­to the dis­ap­pear­ance, and cor­re­spon­dence with Coast Guard of­fi­cials has been rel­a­tive­ly in­fre­quent.

He said the last in­ter­ac­tion with of­fi­cials was last month, when he was in­formed that his broth­er’s salary would be stopped by the end of Ju­ly.

“That was the last bit of in­for­ma­tion I got from them re­gard­ing my broth­er, and that, in a sense, just showed me that he is some­thing in the past as far as they are con­cerned,” he said.

“There’s no re­al in­ter­est, I feel, to find him, but we are his fam­i­ly, and we still con­tin­ue to hold on to his mem­o­ry.”

Si­mon said he was al­so dis­ap­point­ed that many of his broth­er’s friends and col­leagues in the Coast Guard did not at­tempt to reach out to the fam­i­ly to of­fer their con­do­lences or sup­port, not­ing that his broth­er was a ded­i­cat­ed mem­ber of the ser­vice as an ar­mour­er.

“There were peo­ple we ex­pect­ed to hear from af­ter this in­ci­dent hap­pened, and there was no sort of con­tact with them,” he said.

“We know the Coast Guard of­fi­cers are very lim­it­ed in what they can say to us, but we would have ap­pre­ci­at­ed some sort of con­tact or com­mu­ni­ca­tion from them.”

Si­mon said he looked for­ward to greet­ing his broth­er for his birth­day each year and was un­able to sleep on Mon­day evening, as he dread­ed go­ing through the day with his mem­o­ry.

Con­tact­ed for com­ment, for­mer pub­lic in­for­ma­tion of­fi­cer in the Coast Guard, re­tired Lt Cm­dr Kirk Jean-Bap­tiste, said he was sad­dened by the loss of Si­mon.

“I knew Si­mon per­son­al­ly. A ded­i­cat­ed sailor and fa­ther. For­mer naval cadet in the T&T Cadet Force. Dis­ci­plined and well-man­nered young man. Si­mon was an in­struc­tor, a job he took se­ri­ous­ly and pas­sion­ate­ly. He is missed by his batch­es, ship­mates, friends and fam­i­ly.”

Jean-Bap­tiste al­so said he was un­able to com­ment on ef­forts to lo­cate the sunken ves­sel, not­ing such in­for­ma­tion would have to come from the De­fence Force.