Suzanne Shep­pard

The moth­er of a teenag­er who dis­ap­peared in No­vem­ber 2018 be­lieves she spot­ted a girl with a strong re­sem­blance to her daugh­ter in a pho­to of peo­ple res­cued from a hu­man traf­fick­ing camp in Venezuela on Tues­day.

Shon­del Shal­low last saw her daugh­ter, Shind­lar Cuffy, when the Mara­bel­la North Sec­ondary stu­dent got in­to a taxi on the South­ern Main Road, Clax­ton Bay, to go to school.

"I just want to find out if that child on the boat is my daugh­ter,” said Shal­low, re­fer­ring to an im­age which shows peo­ple be­ing helped out of a pirogue by Venezuela Navy per­son­nel on Tues­day.

She said a light-skinned girl with blonde hair and wear­ing glass­es seen seat­ed in the pirogue had un­can­ny sim­i­lar­i­ties to her miss­ing daugh­ter.

Cuffy, who has al­binism, was 16 on the morn­ing of No­vem­ber 26, 2018, when her moth­er saw her get­ting in­to a white AD Wag­on taxi a short dis­tance from their Rose­hill Street, Clax­ton Bay home. She nev­er made it to school.

The fol­low­ing Christ­mas Eve, Shal­low found a let­ter in her daugh­ter’s bed­room in which the teen said the Lord had sent her on a mis­sion. Af­ter that, a voice note be­lieved to be from the peo­ple in­volved in Cuffy’s dis­ap­pear­ance be­gan cir­cu­lat­ing on so­cial me­dia. On the record­ing, a woman with a for­eign ac­cent, who claimed to be a Chris­t­ian pas­tor and leader of Still Small Voice, Heart­d­wellers, was heard say­ing Cuffy was “alive and she will not re­turn.”

The fam­i­ly has al­so re­ceived text mes­sages from the re­li­gious group as­sur­ing that the teen, whom they now re­fer to as Rain­bow, is safe One mes­sage sent on De­cem­ber 27 states: “... she is fine dear, do­ing very well. Pray­ing for you all and trust the Lord he is in con­trol of every­thing dear. Stay blessed. With Love Moth­er Mary El­isha (nana).”

Shal­low, who for­ward­ed all the texts and voice notes to the po­lice, is frus­trat­ed at the lack of progress with in­ves­ti­ga­tions. The case has been han­dled by three dif­fer­ent in­ves­ti­ga­tors in the 18 months since Cuffy went miss­ing and there have been very few up­dates from An­ti Kid­nap­ping Squad, she said.

Shal­low is now ap­peal­ing for help to con­tact Venezue­lan au­thor­i­ties about the girl in the pho­to­graph.

The pho­to­graph was among four cir­cu­lat­ed by the Venezue­lan Navy fol­low­ing a mil­i­tary op­er­a­tion on Tues­day, in which three hu­man traf­fick­ing camps on the Orinoco Delta were raid­ed and 79 peo­ple, in­clud­ing 25 mi­nors, were res­cued.