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Sunday, February 23, 2025

Murdered man’s body released to family after month-long delay

by

Shane Superville
31 days ago
20250124
Kareem St Louis, who was found dead in El Dorado, Tunapuna, in December 2024. He died from blunt force trauma injuries.

Kareem St Louis, who was found dead in El Dorado, Tunapuna, in December 2024. He died from blunt force trauma injuries.

Over a month af­ter his death, a Tu­na­puna man’s fam­i­ly has re­ceived cus­tody of his body. How­ev­er, rel­a­tives are still call­ing for an­swers over what led to re­peat­ed de­lays in the first place.

Ka­reem St Louis, 25, was found dead on a par­cel of land near an El Do­ra­do school on De­cem­ber 4, 2024, with sev­er­al in­juries, in­clud­ing a no­tice­able wound un­der his chest.

His body was tak­en to the Er­ic Williams Med­ical Sci­ences Com­plex’s mor­tu­ary for tem­po­rary stor­age and lat­er to the Foren­sic Sci­ence Cen­tre (FSC), St James, for an au­top­sy. How­ev­er, rel­a­tives claimed the process could not be com­plet­ed, as po­lice of­fi­cers as­signed to wit­ness the au­top­sy did not have St Louis’ med­ical notes to pro­vide to of­fi­cials at the cen­tre.

For over a month, St Louis’ body was trans­port­ed back and forth from an Arou­ca Fu­ner­al Agency, where it was stored, to the FSC, un­til the au­top­sy was even­tu­al­ly per­formed on Tues­day morn­ing.

St Louis’ moth­er, Car­la St Louis, told Guardian Me­dia that while she was re­lieved she had fi­nal­ly re­ceived cus­tody of her son’s body, she was still an­gry be­cause the body be­gan to de­com­pose.

“If this had been a min­is­ter’s son or daugh­ter, there would not have been any kinds of prob­lems like this.

“I am grate­ful he can be laid to rest, but what hap­pened to him and how they treat­ed him isn’t right,” she said.

“I don’t even want to look at the con­di­tion of the body be­cause I know how bad it (the de­com­po­si­tion) prob­a­bly is.”

Ac­cord­ing to the post-mortem re­port, St Louis’ cause of death was due to mul­ti­ple blunt force in­juries.

His med­ical records showed he was di­ag­nosed with a psy­chot­ic dis­or­der in 2017, and had sev­er­al le­gal is­sues due to lar­ce­ny and house-break­ings, for which he was ad­mit­ted to the St Ann’s Psy­chi­atric Hos­pi­tal.

In 2019, he was ar­rest­ed for en­ter­ing a re­strict­ed area at the Pi­ar­co In­ter­na­tion­al Air­port af­ter telling of­fi­cials he was go­ing to vis­it his grand­moth­er in the US and fight in the Viet­nam War. He last sought treat­ment at the St Ann’s Psy­chi­atric Hos­pi­tal in June 2024.

Re­spond­ing to Guardian Me­dia on Tues­day via What­sApp, a spokesper­son from the TTPS Cor­po­rate Com­mu­ni­ca­tions Unit ex­plained that the de­lays oc­curred due to the ab­sence of St Louis’ med­ical doc­u­ments, ad­mit­ting that they “took a lit­tle while” to arrange.

The of­fi­cial said the num­ber of mur­ders oc­cur­ring al­so con­tributed to the de­lay.

St Louis said Ka­reem will be cre­mat­ed.


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