Be­tween the years 2010 and 2019, ap­prox­i­mate­ly two-to-three miss­ing per­son re­ports were made every day in T&T, with a to­tal of 8,383 re­ports in that pe­ri­od.

At the end of 2019, 408 miss­ing per­son cas­es were list­ed as out­stand­ing by the TTPS. While the TTPS’s fig­ures are sub­ject to peo­ple re­turn­ing or fail­ing to up­date po­lice, that means that as many as four peo­ple, on av­er­age, dis­ap­pear with­out be­ing found every month.

In the first two weeks of Oc­to­ber 2020 alone, at least nine peo­ple were re­port­ed miss­ing.

TTPS in­ves­ti­ga­tions in­to miss­ing per­son re­ports are sup­posed to be­gin im­me­di­ate­ly, ac­cord­ing to a pol­i­cy change that came in­to ef­fect years ago. How­ev­er, rel­a­tives in­ter­viewed claimed their cas­es took days to be­gin.

For friends and rel­a­tives, left in the wake of their loved one’s dis­ap­pear­ance are hun­dreds of ques­tions. But they all be­lieve an an­swer lies some­where out there, with some­one.

Shan­ice Coop­er

In the space of one day, An­nette Philbert, the moth­er of Shan­ice Coop­er, with­ered from an ex­cit­ed grand­moth­er-to-be to a shell of her self, has been left griev­ing the dis­ap­pear­ance of her on­ly daugh­ter and, what would have been, her first grand­son.

Per­haps life would be more tol­er­a­ble if she knew what hap­pened to them, but no mat­ter how much she has prayed, searched and hoped, she just doesn’t know.

For every­one who got close to Coop­er–an hon­est, am­bi­tious woman, who played just as hard as she worked–life has stood still, in some way, since she left her Bel­mont home on Au­gust 28, 2019.

Far away from Bel­mont, but with her niece’s well-be­ing close to her heart, Pauline Coop­er is now the voice of (Shan­ice) Coop­er's rel­a­tives.

"An­nette can no longer bear any of this. She’s just left with a void that no amount of words, no amount of coun­selling could as­sist her," she said at her Ma­yaro home.

The liv­ing room is sim­ple and dom­i­nat­ed by a rus­tic book­case, filled with spir­i­tu­al books. To the rear of the house, the sound of car­toons pen­e­trates the wood­en walls.

"That’s just my grand­chil­dren," said Pauline, who was wear­ing a green top and den­im jeans, her hair kept nat­u­ral­ly.

It’s clear, even with few words ex­changed, that she is a strong, com­posed woman, ex­ud­ing as­sertive­ness. But as we be­gin dis­cussing Shan­ice, every ounce of it is put to the test.

While Pauline on­ly saw her niece a few times a year, every time would be a good time. Their last time to­geth­er was in Ma­yaro in Feb­ru­ary 2019. They at­tend­ed a Car­ni­val fete, So­ca by the Sea, Pauline re­called with a smile.

Coop­er, Ma­yaro-born, moved to Bel­mont to live with her moth­er at 14-years-old.

The move up North came af­ter Coop­er’s fa­ther, Pauline’s broth­er, died.

"I lost my broth­er when he had 35 years, and I thought that was painful un­til his daugh­ter dis­ap­peared. The pain I felt for that child who had her whole life in front of her...She didn’t de­serve that," Pauline said.

That Wednes­day morn­ing, Coop­er went in­to her moth­er’s room to say good­bye, like she al­ways did, be­fore head­ing to work at the Port of Port-of-Spain.

She was look­ing re­al­ly beau­ti­ful, Coop­er's moth­er had said. But, her out­fit ex­posed a lit­tle too much skin for her moth­er’s lik­ing.

"She told her she can­not go to work like that be­cause she had on this kind of peach colour, arm-holed dress. Her moth­er told her to make sure to grab a cardi­gan on her way out. That was the last thing she said to her daugh­ter," Pauline said.

Be­fore head­ing to work, Coop­er planned to col­lect some cash from the bank. She had al­so planned to col­lect her US visa lat­er that day. A fe­male rel­a­tive was sup­posed to take her from work to the em­bassy to col­lect it, but the pick-up call from the 31-year-old nev­er came.

"Her moth­er said that she in­stant­ly knew. When she (Shan­ice’s moth­er) came home from work, she looked where Shan­ice nor­mal­ly would leave her shoes, and the shoes weren’t there,” Pauline said.

An­nette’s worst fears were con­firmed when she didn’t see her daugh­ter sit­ting on the couch, look­ing at tele­vi­sion.

So she called an in­di­vid­ual whom she felt would know about her daugh­ter's where­abouts and asked, "Where is my daugh­ter? Did you speak to her for the morn­ing?" The per­son in­di­cat­ed they were not aware where she was and had not spo­ken to her, but had sent an in­spi­ra­tional post to her ear­li­er that day.

Jah­sean

At the time of Coop­er’s dis­ap­pear­ance, she was sev­en months preg­nant.

While al­ways pleas­ant, the news of her preg­nan­cy warmed her per­son­al­i­ty even more.

"Her New Year’s Res­o­lu­tion was be­com­ing preg­nant. That’s all she want­ed for the year," her aunt re­mem­bered.

An al­ready un­break­able bond be­tween Coop­er and An­nette strength­ened.

Buy­ing a home to­geth­er, they planned to move in af­ter Coop­er gave birth to her ba­by boy, Jah­sean.

"They were in the height of plan­ning the ba­by show­er. They even came up with a colour scheme for the ba­by show­er. And that same colour scheme would have been the colour of the clothes they were buy­ing for the ba­by," Pauline said, as her at­tempts to hold back tears fell short.

While Coop­er was ex­cit­ed about the preg­nan­cy, a close rel­a­tive was not and she was ad­vised to have an abor­tion, ac­cord­ing to fam­i­ly mem­bers. That rel­a­tive cut her off be­cause she re­fused to get rid of the ba­by and on­ly showed up a week be­fore her dis­ap­pear­ance.

The Search

The morn­ing Coop­er left her Bel­mont home, as cus­tom­ary, she walked down 50 steps to get to the bot­tom of the hill.

Not a sin­gle per­son in the neigh­bour­hood claimed to have seen her that day.

"One of the neigh­bours said he heard her on the phone with some­one. He said Shan­ice told the per­son she would meet them at the gas sta­tion...I be­lieve it was the per­son re­spon­si­ble," Pauline said with­out hes­i­ta­tion.

On the day of Coop­er’s dis­ap­pear­ance, her moth­er made a miss­ing per­son re­port at the Bel­mont Po­lice. It would take a week for po­lice of­fi­cers to be­gin their in­ves­ti­ga­tions in­to her dis­ap­pear­ance, ac­cord­ing to rel­a­tives.

Dur­ing that time, An­nette, Pauline and Coop­er’s cousins looked all over for her–walk­ing the neigh­bour­hood ask­ing ques­tions, and even dri­ving to ran­dom lo­ca­tions in the hope of see­ing some­thing, any­thing.

"We are very, very dis­ap­point­ed be­cause when An­nette went to make the re­port, we got the nor­mal, give it the 24 hours sto­ry, to give it time, or she must be gone by her boyfriend...They didn’t act at all with­in the first week," Pauline said.

"I have po­lice friends. They were sup­posed to go im­me­di­ate­ly and comb that area and get clip­pings from dif­fer­ent CCTV cam­eras. They did not do that."

A male sus­pect held by po­lice con­cern­ing Coop­er’s dis­ap­pear­ance at­tempt­ed to self-harm while in cus­tody. Sub­se­quent­ly trans­ferred to St Ann’s Hos­pi­tal for a psy­chi­atric eval­u­a­tion, he was lat­er re­leased.

No one has since been held or ques­tioned in con­nec­tion with Coop­er's dis­ap­pear­ance. And no in­ves­ti­ga­tions have tak­en place in the last 11 months, po­lice sources said.

And while they don’t know what hap­pened, Coop­er’s fam­i­ly said they have no doubt who was re­spon­si­ble.

"I mean like every day I thank God that we are peace­ful peo­ple be­cause I know there are fam­i­lies who would not have sat down on this. Who would have not cho­sen to let the law han­dle it, or let God han­dle it,” Pauline said, as her legs shook.

"The sys­tem failed her."

She was in a cer­tain area ac­cord­ing to her phone records, "and the per­son we sus­pect lives there," Pauline added.

With Coop­er weigh­ing close to 300 pounds and five feet, eight inch­es in height, rel­a­tives be­lieve the per­son re­spon­si­ble had help.

She would have fought back, they be­lieved.

"At least once, twice or three times a month, I post her sto­ry with the hope that some­body, who knows some­thing, will be moved, will be touched. That they would find it in their heart to come out and con­fess to what­ev­er they know," Pauline said.

"If you have to write a let­ter anony­mous­ly, or if you have to make an anony­mous phone call, please do some­thing. It’s not for Shan­ice per se. It’s for An­nette, her moth­er, to get clo­sure," she plead­ed.

Left Be­hind

Coop­er’s moth­er is not just griev­ing, she is suf­fer­ing.

Since her daugh­ter left home that day, she’s not got­ten a full night’s rest.

"Some­times hear­ing her vent is so very painful be­cause you hear her cry­ing her heart out. Some­times bawl­ing for her child; her one and on­ly daugh­ter. Some­times, I would just al­low her to cry. I cry with her some­times, but oth­er times, I have no words," a sob­bing Pauline said of An­nette.

Re­call­ing her own strug­gles, Pauline said, "I used to cry night and day for my niece. It didn’t have where some­times one per­son and I alone went search­ing all about in Mara­cas, in Las Cuevas."

As I’ve learned in my in­ter­views with rel­a­tives of miss­ing peo­ple, there is a firm be­lief that their loved one’s dis­ap­pear­ance was not treat­ed as a se­ri­ous mat­ter by po­lice. And, this re­luc­tance to act im­me­di­ate­ly, they all be­lieve, could have made the dif­fer­ence be­tween know­ing and not know­ing.

"My prayer is that one of­fi­cer–like the ones you see in CSI–would nev­er lose in­ter­est in this case. I pray that they will con­tin­ue to in­ves­ti­gate it un­til all the lies are un­earthed. Un­til jus­tice is served," Pauline said.

She had this mes­sage for her beloved niece, "Shan­ice, please show us where you are, my love, and we will come and get you."

To this date, not a sin­gle per­son has pro­vid­ed a po­lice state­ment about Coop­er’s dis­ap­pear­ance.

Ac­cord­ing to the TTPS, all out­stand­ing miss­ing per­son re­ports re­main open and un­der in­ves­ti­ga­tion.