It’s a 50-step climb to get to Shan­nice Coop­er’s home along Bel­mont’s hill­side, but with each step the cries of her moth­er, An­nette Philbert get loud­er and more dis­tinct—cries that pierce the qui­et of Boissierre Lane.

“No­body don’t know! Shan­nice come home! I miss­ing you! Why, why, why!”

A fam­i­ly mem­ber gave us an apolo­getic look while Coop­er’s moth­er wailed hold­ing on­to her walk­er.

“This is how it is with her for the longest while,” the rel­a­tive told us.

It’s been 21 days.

Shan­nice Coop­er, 31, was last seen leav­ing her home on Au­gust 28, to go to work at the port in Port-of-Spain.

“I was on my bed and she was get­ting ready to go to work and then she told me she was leav­ing. That was the last I heard or saw of her,” Philbert said.

Since then Coop­er’s cel­lu­lar phone was found dam­aged in Wood­brook. A male rel­a­tive was de­tained for ques­tion­ing, sent to the St Ann’s Psy­chi­atric Hos­pi­tal for an eval­u­a­tion and then re­leased on Sun­day. Apart from that, Philbert said in­for­ma­tion has been hard to come by.

“I’m not get­ting any in­for­ma­tion, noth­ing to hold on to. It’s very frus­trat­ing know­ing your on­ly child out there and you don’t know any­thing. My bel­ly hurt­ing and my heart hurt­ing.”

To make mat­ters worse, Coop­er is six months preg­nant with a ba­by boy. They al­ready picked out a name.

“We go­ing to call him Jayceon, we were mak­ing a lot of plans and mak­ing joke be­cause some­times I would ask her how ba­by Jaycee sleep last night or she would make a joke in the night and say that my grand­son pray­ing,” Philbert said with tears in her eyes as she looked over some of the ba­by clothes Coop­er bought for the un­born child.

Coop­er’s aunt, Pauline Coop­er, mean­while, finds it sus­pi­cious that no­body saw or knows any­thing about the port work­er’s dis­ap­pear­ance.

“If on that morn­ing the neigh­bour said she was on her phone and speak­ing to some­one telling them ex­act­ly where to meet her, I think that per­son knows where Shan­nice is.”

And while they are op­ti­mistic, Pauline says they have to be re­al­is­tic.

“We are aware of how things could go, and I’m re­al­ly plead­ing with the per­son who placed their hands on my niece. Please, she has fam­i­ly who loves her. She is not a per­son who would just go out there and not tell her fam­i­ly. She’s very dis­ci­plined where that is con­cern.”

The fam­i­ly is ask­ing any­one with in­for­ma­tion to call the po­lice.

They said the po­lice ad­vised them not to give out their per­son­al in­for­ma­tion in case any­one tries to ex­tort mon­ey from them through ran­som de­mands.