Sascha Wil­son

Se­nior Re­porter

sascha.wil­son@guardian.co.tt

With La Ro­main cou­ple Samuel Mon­tano and Za­hee­da Mo­hammed still miss­ing, a search and res­cue group is ap­peal­ing to fish­er­men op­er­at­ing in the Gulf of Paria to re­main vig­i­lant.

Val­lence Ramb­harat, head of the Hunters’ Search and Res­cue Team, con­firmed his group sent a memo to two fish­ing as­so­ci­a­tions, re­quest­ing their as­sis­tance in keep­ing watch for any signs that could help lo­cate the miss­ing cou­ple.

On Mon­day, divers from the Trinidad and To­ba­go Coast Guard scoured the wa­ters near the cou­ple’s shore­line home, while ca­dav­er dogs searched on land, but they turned up no sig­nif­i­cant leads.

Forty-four-year-old Mon­tano and 36-year-old Mo­hammed were dis­cov­ered miss­ing on Sun­day by a rel­a­tive, who alert­ed po­lice af­ter find­ing a trail of blood lead­ing from the res­i­dence to the near­by shore­line.

In­side the house, po­lice re­cov­ered 23 spent shell cas­ings, in­clud­ing sev­en with TTPS mark­ings.

How­ev­er, Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice Al­lis­ter Gue­var­ro said the shells would have to un­der­go foren­sic test­ing to de­ter­mine whether the rounds orig­i­nat­ed from of­fi­cial po­lice stock.

As the in­ves­ti­ga­tion con­tin­ues, law en­force­ment of­fi­cials con­firmed there have been no new de­vel­op­ments in the case.

In­ves­ti­ga­tors are look­ing in­to in­for­ma­tion that Samuel may have been ow­ing a debt. Po­lice al­so be­lieve that the cou­ple may have been dragged from their home to a boat and tak­en away.

Any­one with in­for­ma­tion is urged to con­tact the near­est po­lice sta­tion.