A teenaged girl who was re­ceiv­ing coun­selling af­ter her fa­ther's mur­der ex­act­ly one year and a day ago has gone miss­ing.

Veni­ta Chablal, 14, was last seen on March 23 and her moth­er, Na­dine, fears the child's in­abil­i­ty to cope with her fa­ther's mur­der, which re­mains un­solved, trig­gered her to run away from home.

Veni­ta was last seen wear­ing a black jer­sey, blue jeans and a pair of red and white sneak­ers around Per­se­ver­ance, Cou­va.

Up un­til two weeks ago, Veni­ta lived with her moth­er and two sis­ters at South­ern Main Road, Plai­sance Park, Pointe-a-Pierre.

The child's fa­ther, Vish­nu Chablal, a tow truck dri­ver, was gunned down out­side his home last year, two days af­ter thieves broke in­to his house and stole sev­er­al items. There were nev­er any ar­rests in that case.

In an in­ter­view with the T&T Guardian yes­ter­day, Veni­ta's moth­er said al­though she and Chablal sep­a­rat­ed when Veni­ta was sev­en, Veni­ta was clos­est to him of all her chil­dren.

"Even af­ter we broke up he would al­ways come to look for her and call her every­day. They were very close and when he was killed she kind of fell apart," Na­dine said.

"She was re­ceiv­ing coun­selling at the Cou­va Po­lice sta­tion, but she was not re­spond­ing much to it."

She said Veni­ta, a form two stu­dent of the Cou­va West Sec­ondary, al­so be­gan act­ing out since her fa­ther's death.

"She was not open­ing up to me or to the coun­sel­lor and she was just giv­ing a lit­tle trou­ble since her fa­ther died. She is a good child oth­er­wise," she said.

Na­dine said Veni­ta start­ed get­ting in­to trou­ble be­cause peo­ple took ad­van­tage of her vul­ner­a­bil­i­ty.

"Peo­ple have a way of get­ting to young girls who are hurt­ing. They took ad­van­tage of this sit­u­a­tion and ad­vised her to leave the house."

She said none of Veni­ta's clothes or be­long­ings were miss­ing from her bed­room, as the child ap­peared to have tak­en noth­ing with her. She sent out an emo­tion­al plea for the re­turn of her sec­ond child.

"All I want is for her to come home safe­ly. I will get her more thor­ough coun­selling, any­thing for her to come back home. I am beg­ging who­ev­er has Veni­ta, please bring her home."

Any­one with in­for­ma­tion can con­tact the An­ti-Kid­nap­ping Squad, St Mar­garet's Po­lice Sta­tion or the near­est po­lice sta­tion. –SR