A 19-year-old man re­port­ed miss­ing for the last sev­en days has been iden­ti­fied as the ban­dit found dead in a drain be­hind a busi­ness place in Cou­va on Sun­day.

Po­lice said Arnold Pooran, of Friend­ship Vil­lage, San Fer­nan­do, who was orig­i­nal­ly from Spring Trace, War­den Road, Point Fortin, had been re­port­ed miss­ing af­ter his fam­i­ly last heard from him on Sep­tem­ber 12.

His body was iden­ti­fied by his moth­er yes­ter­day, po­lice said.

Of­fi­cers said Pooran re­port­ed­ly told his moth­er he was “go­ing with a friend to hus­tle” be­fore leav­ing his home.

Pooran, along with two oth­er men, broke in­to Casa En­ter­pris­es on South­ern Main Road, Mc Bean, Cou­va.

The trio il­le­gal­ly en­tered the premis­es but ran off when po­lice and se­cu­ri­ty of­fi­cers re­spond­ed.

Pooran’s body was dis­cov­ered in a drain be­hind the busi­ness af­ter his ac­com­plices elud­ed the law eforce­ment of­fi­cers.

Po­lice said hy­brid bat­ter­ies, which had been stolen from sev­er­al ve­hi­cles on the com­pa­ny’s com­pound, were found hid­den in near­by bush­es.