RAD­HI­CA DE SIL­VA

Se­nior Mul­ti­me­dia Re­porter

rad­hi­ca.sookraj@guardian.co.tt

Con­vinced that not enough is be­ing done to find his miss­ing wife, Eng­lish­man Kelvin Ad­sett is now of­fer­ing a $20,000 re­ward for in­for­ma­tion lead­ing to her where­abouts.

In an in­ter­view with Guardian Me­dia, Kelvin said al­though his wife, Christi­na Ad­sett, 60, has been miss­ing since Sep­tem­ber 11, he is dis­turbed the De­fence Force, po­lice and oth­er arms of law en­force­ment have not joined to find her.

Con­cern­ing the re­ward, he said, “I am a pen­sion­er. I am 71 years old, this is all I can af­ford. Some­one must have seen or heard some­thing and we want peo­ple to come out and help us find her.”

De­scrib­ing the on­go­ing po­lice in­ves­ti­ga­tion as “an ab­solute night­mare”, he raised ques­tions about the ab­sence of a ded­i­cat­ed po­lice li­ai­son with his fam­i­ly, as he would ex­pect in the Unit­ed King­dom.

“We do not know what is hap­pen­ing. The hunters have searched all over and are ac­tu­al­ly do­ing what the po­lice are sup­posed to be do­ing,” he said.

He said the on­ly politi­cian who con­tact­ed him was Oropouche West MP Dav­en­dranath Tan­coo, who promised to as­sist in what­ev­er way pos­si­ble.

How­ev­er, as the days turn in­to weeks, Kelvin said he was ap­palled by the lack of con­cern from lo­cal au­thor­i­ties, es­pe­cial­ly giv­en that his wife is a British cit­i­zen.

He said In­ter­pol and the British Em­bassy had been con­tact­ed about his wife’s dis­ap­pear­ance and were li­ais­ing with lo­cal po­lice, who ap­peared to have made no head­way in­to the case.

He claimed of­fi­cers from the Pe­nal Po­lice Sta­tion had not up­dat­ed him on the case and an in­for­mant who gave po­lice cer­tain in­for­ma­tion had since been re­leased.

Say­ing Eng­lish­men were not meant to cry, Kelvin said it was heart­break­ing not know­ing his wife’s where­abouts.

He re­called how his wife loved T&T and had con­tributed to the up­lift­ment of her com­mu­ni­ty and coun­try.

“So why now, when she is in trou­ble, no­body is con­cerned? Is this how el­der­ly peo­ple are treat­ed here?” he asked.

Kelvin said they were mar­ried for 30 years and plan­ning to re­tire in the Unit­ed King­dom.

The cou­ple had met while Christi­na worked in Lon­don and have one daugh­ter, Kel­ly Ad­sett.

Kelvin said Kel­ly has been over­whelmed with grief and an­guish since her moth­er was re­port­ed miss­ing.

Christi­na was last seen clean­ing the front of her prop­er­ty, which hous­es her res­i­dence and busi­ness, Christi­na’s Foot Spa, at Su­chit Trace, Pe­nal.

She was wear­ing brown pants and a yel­low T-shirt at the time of her dis­ap­pear­ance.

Two days lat­er, the Spe­cial In­ves­ti­ga­tion Unit (SIU) con­tact­ed the Pe­nal po­lice to ver­i­fy in­for­ma­tion sug­gest­ing that Ad­sett had been kid­napped.

Up­on vis­it­ing her home, the po­lice found the back door open, but there were no vis­i­ble signs of forced en­try.

Christi­na’s cell phone and car keys were found in­side the house.