Shane Su­perville

Se­nior Re­porter

shane.su­perville@guardian.co.tt

While they are grate­ful that the re­mains of their loved one were fi­nal­ly found, the moth­er and aunt of mur­der vic­tim Sal­isha Ali say they con­tin­ue to grap­ple with the grief of her loss, es­pe­cial­ly when they re­flect on the vi­o­lent cir­cum­stances be­hind her death.

Ali, 33, had mi­grat­ed from T&T to the US with her hus­band Rupc­hand Sim­boo. Ac­cord­ing to re­ports, she was last seen alive in Ju­ly, 2025.

In­for­ma­tion pub­lished on the Queen’s Dis­trict At­tor­ney’s web­site yes­ter­day re­port­ed that on Sep­tem­ber 22, 2025, san­i­ta­tion work­ers found Ali’s tor­so wrapped in a blue mov­ing blan­ket near 149th Av­enue and Brookville Boule­vard, New York. More re­mains were found by po­lice in­ves­ti­ga­tors near the North Chan­nel Bridge be­tween March 5 and 6.

Ac­cord­ing to the web­site, Sim­boo was ar­raigned on Wednes­day night on a charge of sec­ond-de­gree mur­der, two counts of con­ceal­ment of a hu­man corpse and two counts of tam­per­ing with phys­i­cal ev­i­dence.

Queens Crim­i­nal Court Judge Shar­i­fa Nass­er-Cuel­lar re­mand­ed him in­to cus­tody. He is ex­pect­ed to re­turn to court on March 16.

Speak­ing with Guardian Me­dia yes­ter­day, Ali’s moth­er, Paula Se­quea, said while she was grate­ful that some­one was held in con­nec­tion with her daugh­ter’s mur­der, it did not ease the grief she still felt.

“I don’t feel any how be­cause al­though he’s charged ... it’s still not go­ing to bring back my daugh­ter and I just want back my daugh­ter,” she said.

“I’m glad they held him be­cause he was out there since Ju­ly last year un­til March this year ... I was over there (in the US) in De­cem­ber (2025), I had the fu­ner­al and did the cre­ma­tion ... we had to use a Go­FundMe to bring her back home ... not even all of her, part of her.”

Se­quea said she vis­it­ed her daugh­ter in New York in Feb­ru­ary, where they spent time sight­see­ing and shop­ping.

“We took a lot of pic­tures, we went to Man­hat­tan, we rode on the train ... I spent two weeks over there with her and that’s when she be­gan to work.”

She said her daugh­ter worked as a live-in geri­atric aide at Howard Beach.

Se­quea said her grand­daugh­ters (Ali’s daugh­ters), ages ten, 13 and 14, were deeply dis­traught, not­ing that she was their emo­tion­al and fi­nan­cial sup­port, as Ali sent mon­ey to the fam­i­ly at every op­por­tu­ni­ty she could.

Guardian Me­dia al­so spoke to Ali’s aunt Brid­get Se­quea-Mel­oney, who said she re­called her niece as a lov­ing, car­ing woman who worked hard to pro­vide for her daugh­ters.

Se­quea-Mel­oney said while she was al­so griev­ing her niece’s mur­der, she was hap­py her re­mains were re­cov­ered, which she said of­fered the fam­i­ly some clo­sure.

“When she left here she had all her body parts firm­ly to­geth­er and now she’s com­ing back home dis­mem­bered ... that re­al­ly leaves a scar in your heart, so just know­ing for a fact that they did find the rest of her body, be­cause that’s what we’re pray­ing for, for that we’re for­ev­er grate­ful.”

Re­call­ing the anx­i­ety be­fore Ali’s re­mains were found, she said she re­mained firm in her faith through­out the ex­pe­ri­ence.

De­spite this, she main­tained the fam­i­ly was not in de­nial even be­fore Ali’s re­mains were dis­cov­ered, as she knew she would not have bro­ken her sched­ule of call­ing her daugh­ters each day.

“She would call her daugh­ters every sin­gle night be­cause she was in pa­tient care ... there was one par­tic­u­lar la­dy she cared for and that la­dy told my sis­ter that when Sal­isha was done with her, she would al­ways talk about call­ing her daugh­ters.

“So every sin­gle night she would call, so when my sis­ter didn’t hear from her af­ter Ju­ly 13, my sis­ter knew that some­thing wasn’t right ... that’s not like her at all.”

Queens Dis­trict At­tor­ney Melin­da Katz, in a post on the of­fi­cial web­site of the Dis­trict At­tor­ney, said Sim­boo al­leged­ly went to “ex­tra­or­di­nary lengths to evade re­spon­si­bil­i­ty for the bru­tal killing of his wife, dis­card­ing her re­mains in re­mote lo­ca­tions and con­ceal­ing crit­i­cal ev­i­dence in an ap­par­ent ef­fort to cov­er up this hor­rif­ic crime.”

Katz al­so com­mend­ed the ef­forts of New York City San­i­ta­tion work­ers who prompt­ly re­port­ed the dis­cov­ery of body parts to the po­lice.

“The vic­tim’s loved ones might still be search­ing for an­swers about her dis­ap­pear­ance. My thoughts are with Sal­isha Ali’s fam­i­ly and friends as we work to en­sure the de­fen­dant is held ful­ly ac­count­able.”

How­ev­er, Se­quea-Mel­oney al­so cred­it­ed the dis­cov­ery of her re­mains to a mo­bile app.