A man and woman were up to last night be­ing ques­tioned for the mur­der of Japan­ese pan play­er Asa­mi Na­gakiya. How­ev­er, po­lice were care­ful not to la­bel the duo as sus­pects as they both went in vol­un­tar­i­ly to of­fer in­for­ma­tion.

The two were be­ing in­ter­ro­gat­ed af­ter an au­top­sy re­vealed Na­gakiya, 30, was man­u­al­ly stran­gled to death be­fore she was thrown in­to some bush­es un­der a tree around the Queen's Park Sa­van­nah be­tween Car­ni­val Tues­day and Ash Wednes­day, when she was dis­cov­ered.

Po­lice last night said they were al­so be­ing "as­sist­ed gen­er­ous­ly" by cit­i­zens seek­ing to help piece to­geth­er the hours be­fore, dur­ing and af­ter Na­gakiya's killing.

Na­gakiya was a trained mu­si­cian by pro­fes­sion and ar­rived in Trinidad on Jan­u­ary 8 to par­tic­i­pate in Car­ni­val re­lat­ed events. She was from Sap­poro in the north­ern Japan­ese is­land of Hokkai­do.

Na­gakiya's au­top­sy was car­ried out by pathol­o­gist Dr Valery Alexan­drov at the Foren­sic Sci­ence Cen­tre, St James. How­ev­er, Alexan­drov re­ferred all ques­tions from the Guardian to the Japan­ese Em­bassy.

The pathol­o­gist said he could not con­firm or de­ny whether Na­gakiya was sex­u­al­ly as­sault­ed as had been sug­gest­ed in some re­ports, say­ing it was "be­yond his com­pe­tence."

How­ev­er, the T&T Guardian un­der­stands swabs would have to be tak­en and analysed to de­ter­mine whether there was sex­u­al as­sault.

At the cen­tre ear­li­er yes­ter­day, two Japan­ese men said to be rep­re­sen­ta­tives of the em­bassy did not speak with the me­dia af­ter view­ing the body and quick­ly left the com­pound in a black Toy­ota Pa­jero, es­cort­ed by po­lice in a white Nis­san Xtrail.

Con­tact­ed lat­er yes­ter­day, a spokesman for the Japan­ese Em­bassy said they did not wish to com­ment on Na­gakiya's case as the po­lice in­ves­ti­ga­tion was at a sen­si­tive stage.

"We are check­ing the sta­tus of the in­ci­dent with the lo­cal po­lice au­thor­i­ty. We can­not say any­thing de­fin­i­tive at this mo­ment," he said.

The spokesman re­fused to re­veal if the em­bassy had con­tact­ed Na­gakiya's fam­i­ly in Japan and if the em­bassy was in­volved in or­gan­is­ing her fu­ner­al arrange­ments. How­ev­er, the T&T Guardian was told her body will be flown back to Japan as soon as arrange­ments are made.

House searched

Mean­while, Crime Scene In­ves­ti­ga­tors in­ves­ti­gat­ing Na­gakiya's mur­der vis­it­ed a house at 40 Wood­ford Street, New­town, yes­ter­day search­ing for clues in the case.

Short­ly af­ter 4 pm, three po­lice ve­hi­cles ar­rived out­side the prop­er­ty, which has been aban­doned for a cou­ple years, since Na­gakiya had re­port­ed­ly been seen there.

The of­fi­cers were at the prop­er­ty for sev­er­al hours and cap­tured pho­tographs and oth­er sen­si­tive ma­te­r­i­al which are most like­ly to be sub­mit­ted as added ev­i­dence in the in­ves­ti­ga­tion.

An in­ves­ti­gat­ing of­fi­cer at the scene told the T&T Guardian that the house is known to be fre­quent­ed by ques­tion­able char­ac­ters. An­oth­er of­fi­cer said they had in­for­ma­tion that Na­gakiya al­so went there, hence the rea­son a team of CSI of­fi­cers were despatched to process thor­ough­ly the venue.

Speak­ing with the T&T Guardian yes­ter­day, a near­by res­i­dent said the build­ing was once oc­cu­pied by the Rape Cri­sis So­ci­ety.

"The or­gan­i­sa­tion moved out about two to three years and since then it has been left aban­doned," the fe­male res­i­dent said.

An­oth­er res­i­dent, a male, said he saw Na­gakiya in the area a few times dur­ing the sea­son and added on­ly once he had seen her en­ter the com­pound and ex­it alone.

Ac­cord­ing to re­ports, Ge­off Adams, of Tamana, was walk­ing through the Queen's Park Sa­van­nah when he no­ticed a home­less man scream­ing while point­ing to a patch of bush­es.

It turned out he was point­ing to Na­gakiya's body, which was found me­tres away from the 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 CSIs combed through heaps of dis­card­ed food and bev­er­age con­tain­ers, which sur­round­ed Na­gakiya's body, for ev­i­dence.

JENSEN LA VENDE an­dRHON­DOR DOWLAT