Loyse Vin­cent

The qui­et fish­ing com­mu­ni­ty of Belle Gar­den, To­ba­go, was rocked by the grue­some dis­cov­ery of 14 bod­ies and oth­er hu­man re­mains on board a fish­ing ves­sel drift­ing just a few miles out at sea ear­ly yes­ter­day morn­ing.

Ac­cord­ing to re­ports, fish­er­men from the area said they were on a reg­u­lar fish­ing trip just af­ter 6 am, when they ob­served the odd­ly-shaped boat which ap­peared to them to be Venezue­lan due to its de­sign.

They said the boat ap­peared to be un­manned and drift­ing to­wards shore. The ves­sel bore the reg­is­tra­tion num­ber AG231.

Ac­cord­ing to the fish­er­men, a strong and foul odour was al­so com­ing from the ves­sel and af­ter tak­ing a clos­er look, they saw what ap­peared to be hu­man re­mains on board.

One of the fish­er­men who made the dis­cov­ery, Ja­son Broomes, spoke with the me­dia about his ex­pe­ri­ence.

“There was a boat with plen­ty fish around it and it was smelling stink, so it might have dead peo­ple. We take a lit­tle small peep and we see a body over the bough but we know with that smell it had to be more.”

Broomes said af­ter alert­ing the T&T Coast Guard, the fish­er­men were ad­vised by the Coast­guards­men that they did not have a ves­sel avail­able and that they (fish­er­men) should in­stead pull the ves­sel to shore.

“Imag­ine they don’t have no ves­sel and I find they al­ways sup­posed to have a boat on stand­by, be­cause if it was an emer­gency and some­body was in dif­fi­cul­ty what would have hap­pened.”

When the fish­er­men ar­rived to shore with the ves­sel around 10.30 am, it had to be dragged on­to land by heavy equip­ment, as the rope used to tow the boat to shore broke sev­er­al times while men were try­ing to moor the ves­sel.

The dis­cov­ery caused vil­lagers to gath­er at the beach to gain a view­ing point.

“We just heard a boat come ashore with dead bod­ies,” some of them were heard say­ing.

Po­lice, who had blocked the main ac­cess point to the beach, even­tu­al­ly fanned, out clear­ing the beach­es, sight­ing in­fringe­ment of COVID-19 reg­u­la­tions which pro­hib­it peo­ple from be­ing on beach­es.

In­ves­ti­ga­tors re­mained on the beach pro­cess­ing the scene un­til about 4 pm.

Guardian Me­dia was told that a cell­phone and a GPS de­vice were found on board.

The To­ba­go Emer­gency Man­age­ment Agency al­so as­sist­ed in se­cur­ing the area.

TEMA chair­man Al­lan Stew­art de­scribed the scene as shock­ing, as “sev­er­al of the bod­ies were dis­mem­bered and in an ad­vanced stage of de­com­po­si­tion.”

“In­ves­ti­ga­tions are con­tin­u­ing. Bod­ies are de­com­posed and we can’t say the na­tion­al­i­ties, so the in­ves­ti­ga­tions are try­ing to con­firm the na­tion­al­i­ties. They are all male. So far, they were clothed in - most of them - in green rain jack­ets and Puma track pants. There were no sur­vivors in the ves­sel,” he said.

Guardian Me­dia con­tact­ed TTCG Pub­lic Af­fairs Of­fi­cer Khadi­ja Lamy for a com­ment on the fish­er­men’s claim that they con­tact­ed the Coast Guard for help and were told they had no ves­sel to re­spond. Up to news time, there was no re­sponse.

In a news re­lease, the TTPS con­firmed the dis­cov­ery of the 14 bod­ies, a skull and skele­tal re­mains.

ACP William Nurse, Po­lice Supt Rhodil Kirk and sev­er­al Homi­cide, Char­lot­teville and Rox­bor­ough CID of­fi­cers were at the scene. In­ves­ti­ga­tions are con­tin­u­ing.