Derek Achong

Homi­cide de­tec­tives last night de­tained two em­ploy­ees of IAM Com­pa­ny Lim­it­ed in con­nec­tion with the death of miss­ing bank clerk Shan­non Ban­field.

Hours af­ter the gris­ly dis­cov­ery of Ban­field's body in IAM's Char­lotte Street, Port-of-Spain ware­house, Matthew Ma­haraj and Dale Seecha­ran sur­ren­dered at the Cen­tral Po­lice Sta­tion around 7.30 pm, hours af­ter po­lice had ear­li­er sent out a bul­letin say­ing they were per­sons of in­ter­est in the in­ves­ti­ga­tion.

The T&T Guardian un­der­stands the men, both from San Juan, had failed to show up for work since Ban­field, 20, whose body was found by a se­cu­ri­ty guard around 1.30 pm yes­ter­day, was re­port­ed miss­ing by rel­a­tives on Mon­day night.

Ac­cord­ing to re­ports, the guard was in­ves­ti­gat­ing a bad odour in the build­ing, ini­tial­ly de­tect­ed by em­ploy­ees since Tues­day, when he found her body hid­den un­der a set of box­es in a sec­ond-storey store­room which is off lim­its to cus­tomers.

Po­lice ar­rived on the scene short­ly af­ter and de­tained all em­ploy­ees for ques­tion­ing as crime scene in­ves­ti­ga­tors processed the scene.

The em­ploy­ees were re­leased lat­er yes­ter­day as po­lice con­tin­ued the search for their miss­ing col­leagues.

Ban­field's rel­a­tives were not al­lowed to pos­i­tive­ly iden­ti­fy her body at lo­ca­tion, but in­ves­ti­ga­tors said they were "99 per cent sure" it was her as the vic­tim was still wear­ing her RBL uni­form and her lunch bag, hand­bag and shop­ping bags were found next to her body.

Ban­field re­port­ed­ly had marks of vi­o­lence on her neck and up­per body and her cloth­ing was torn.

In­ves­ti­ga­tors said they would wait un­til an au­top­sy is per­formed at the Foren­sic Sci­ence Cen­tre, St James, to­day to de­ter­mine her cause of death.

Ban­field, of Mc Carthy Street, Can­taro Vil­lage, San­ta Cruz, was last seen leav­ing her work place–RBL's In­de­pen­dence Square branch–around 4 pm on Mon­day.

In a tele­phone con­ver­sa­tion with her moth­er Sher­ry-Ann Lopez around that time, Ban­field had said she was leav­ing work to pur­chase items at the same store (IAM) she was even­tu­al­ly found in. Lopez said she would nor­mal­ly drop off and pick up her daugh­ter from work, but she (Ban­field) de­cid­ed to trav­el on Mon­day.

In a press re­lease is­sued yes­ter­day, RBL gen­er­al man­ag­er of Hu­man Re­sources, An­na-Maria Gar­cia-Brooks, said Ban­field's col­leagues were deeply trau­ma­tised by the news.

"This is a tragedy of im­mea­sur­able pro­por­tions and we are at a loss for words to ex­press our shock and sad­ness...This is a sad day for the Re­pub­lic Bank team and for our na­tion," Gar­cia-Brooks said, as she not­ed that coun­selling will be pro­vid­ed for af­fect­ed co-work­ers.

In a tele­phone in­ter­view with CNC3 last night, IAM own­er Ish­mael Ali con­firmed the cir­cum­stances lead­ing to the dis­cov­ery and said he and his staff were co-op­er­at­ing with in­ves­ti­ga­tors.

The shock­ing end of the search for Ban­field vir­tu­al­ly shut down all Christ­mas shop­ping ac­tiv­i­ty around the cap­i­tal's busiest shop­ping dis­trict, as po­lice forced all sur­round­ing stores and road­side ven­dors to close their op­er­a­tions as they cor­doned off a large swath of the road.

While most em­ploy­ees and cus­tomers were vo­cal in their dis­plea­sure of the mea­sures tak­en by po­lice to se­cure the scene, most gath­ered be­hind the cau­tion tape di­vid­ing the busy street and wait­ed over four hours to catch a glimpse of un­der­tak­ers re­mov­ing her body.

"I was get­ting a nasty smell around here since Tues­day, but peo­ple was say­ing it was a dead rat. I shocked to hear this evening that a woman body was across the road all this time," one road­side ven­dor, who asked to re­main uniden­ti­fied, said.

Sev­er­al of Ban­field's co-work­ers al­so vis­it­ed the scene, but did not stick around long as they broke down in tears re­peat­ed­ly as her name was men­tioned.

Spec­u­la­tion was rife be­tween spec­ta­tors, many of whom trad­ed con­spir­a­cy the­o­ries in re­la­tion to the mur­der, which ranged from hu­man traf­fick­ing to or­gan har­vest­ing.

"That pret­ty lit­tle girl have to get jus­tice. Lock up every­body in the store un­til you find out who is the sicko who do it," one woman was heard scream­ing at a po­lice of­fi­cer.

Se­nior Supt Sais­nar­ine Ma­habir and de­tec­tives of the Re­gion One Homi­cide Bu­reau are con­tin­u­ing in­ves­ti­ga­tions.