Derek Achong

Japan­ese pan­nist Asa­mi Na­gakiya was last night iden­ti­fied as the mas­quer­ad­er found dead at the Queen's Park Sa­van­nah, Port-of-Spain, yes­ter­day.Homi­cide de­tec­tives were able to con­firm her iden­ti­ty last night, hav­ing sought the pub­lic's as­sis­tance ear­li­er, af­ter her body was found un­der a tree around 9.30 am.

Nagikiya and some of her friends have made head­lines over the years as they tra­di­tion­al­ly vis­it T&T to play in the Na­tion­al Panora­ma com­pe­ti­tions, in­clud­ing with for­mer cham­pi­ons Phase II Pan Groove and PCS Ni­tro­gen Sil­ver Stars, and par­take of the Car­ni­val fes­tiv­i­ties.

Ac­cord­ing to re­ports, Ge­off Adams, of Tamana, was walk­ing through the area when he no­ticed a home­less man scream­ing while point­ing at a patch of bush­es.

"The guy say he see some­thing in the bush­es. I say it was a man­i­cou or igua­na but when I look I see a biki­ni bot­tom," Adams told re­porters in a brief in­ter­view af­ter be­ing in­ter­ro­gat­ed by po­lice on the scene.

The gris­ly dis­cov­ery was made mere me­tres away from Queen's Roy­al Col­lege and the Mar­aval Road round­about, as crews from the Com­mu­ni­ty-based En­vi­ron­men­tal Pro­tec­tion and En­hance­ment Pro­gramme (Cepep) were busy clean­ing up rub­bish left over from Car­ni­val cel­e­bra­tions.

The area was cor­doned off by po­lice for sev­er­al hours as crime scene in­ves­ti­ga­tors combed heaps of dis­card­ed food and bev­er­age con­tain­ers, which sur­round­ed Na­gakiya, for ev­i­dence. Na­gakiya was found ly­ing face down and was sub­se­quent­ly tak­en to the Foren­sic Sci­ence Cen­tre, St James, where an au­top­sy will be per­formed to­day.

Adams, who said he slept on a near­by park bench be­tween Sun­day night and yes­ter­day morn­ing to ful­ly im­merse him­self in this year's Car­ni­val cel­e­bra­tions, said he had not seen the woman in the area when he went to sleep late Tues­day night.

"If a woman was mak­ing noise that hour of the night I would not have think some­thing was wrong be­cause all kinds of dif­fer­ent things does hap­pen in Car­ni­val," Adams said.He said from his brief ob­ser­va­tions of the body be­fore he con­tact­ed po­lice, the woman ap­peared to have marks of vi­o­lence on her right fore­arm and waist.

"She had a lac­er­a­tion on her el­bow and black and blue marks on her waist. It look like a rape/mur­der to me," Adams said.

Po­lice sources said based on the state of de­com­po­si­tion of the body, Na­gakiya prob­a­bly died on Tues­day night but they re­fused to spec­u­late on the cause of death or the pos­si­bil­i­ty she may have been sex­u­al­ly as­sault­ed be­fore they re­ceive the re­sults of her au­top­sy. Homi­cide de­tec­tives said last night, how­ev­er, that they had re­ceived in­for­ma­tion that she had a med­ical con­di­tion.

When she was ini­tial­ly found, there were no iden­ti­fi­ca­tion doc­u­ments on or near the body, save a band from the Car­ni­val band Lega­cy.In a tele­phone in­ter­view yes­ter­day, be­fore she was iden­ti­fied, Lega­cy band­leader "Big Mike" An­toine said he was search­ing his reg­is­tra­tion data­base to see if he could as­sist po­lice in iden­ti­fy­ing her.

"We have a lot of peo­ple who play mas with us," An­toine said as he ex­plained that he was us­ing the vic­tim's cos­tume mea­sure­ments to help iden­ti­fy her, as bands did not take pic­tures of in­di­vid­ual mas­quer­aders.

While he main­tained his band en­sured the safe­ty of its mas­quer­aders dur­ing the Pa­rade of the Bands, he not­ed that they could not en­sure rev­ellers' safe­ty once cel­e­bra­tions had end­ed.

"We had a smooth and in­ci­dent free Car­ni­val. A band­leader can­not do any­thing if some­one gets killed or in­jured on their way home. The most I could do now is help iden­ti­fy the mas­quer­ad­er for the fam­i­ly," An­toine said.

He sug­gest­ed that the vic­tim pos­si­bly had her fate­ful en­counter af­ter leav­ing the band's Las Lap which end­ed at its Wood­brook mas camp around 7 pm.

"The on­ly time we were at the Sa­van­nah was when we crossed the stage af­ter Ron­nie and Car­ro around 10 am in the morn­ing," An­toine said.

In­sp Michael Veronique, Cpl Stan­ley Romeo and PC Kendall Abra­ham, of the Re­gion One Homi­cide Bu­reau, vis­it­ed the scene and are con­tin­u­ing in­ves­ti­ga­tions.