KEVON FELMINE
kevon.felmine@guardian.co.tt
Pete-Ann Bartholemew should have spent yesterday celebrating her son's 11th birthday. Instead, she had to travel from morgue to morgue to find her husband's body.
It had been 17 days since the love of Bartholemew's life, Chevonne, a diver with Trindivers Underwater Services, went missing in the waters off Gasparee Island in the Gulf of Paria.
On January 30, Chevonne, 37, was inspecting the C Spirit crude oil tanker and never returned to the surface. Weeks of searches yielded nothing.
On Ash Wednesday, the T&T Coast Guard received a report of a body seen floating in the Gulf and recovered it five miles off the coast of Cedros. The body was clad in a black wetsuit complete with a diver's weight belt similar to the gear Chevonne was wearing when he went missing. The Coast guard brought the body to shore and his family was contacted.
A District Medical Officer examined the body and ordered its transfer to the mortuary at the San Fernando General Hospital. But as Bartholemew set off from her Valencia home to identify and claim her husband's body at the hospital yesterday, she was told the body was not there. Already traumatised, she went to a funeral home to see if he had been kept there but he was not. Sometime later, she got news that the body was taken to the Forensic Science Centre, St James. While Chevonne's face was severely decomposed the body was preserved, as it was encased in his wetsuit.
After identifying the body, Bartholemew told the Trinidad Guardian she was happy that he was finally found and the family could get closure, because not knowing what happened to him would have been torturous for her. She said funeral arrangements will be made after discussions with his family. She is expected to submit dental records today to confirm her husband's identity.
An autopsy found no evidence of foul play.