Sascha Wil­son

Do­minic Gokool choked to death on mud and soil, ac­cord­ing to an au­top­sy.

Gokool’s de­com­pos­ing body was dis­cov­ered par­tial­ly sunken in a mud vol­cano in the Irois For­est in Chatham two Thurs­days ago.

He was re­port­ed miss­ing on Jan­u­ary 13.

Gokool’s moth­er Denise Alexan­der, went yes­ter­day to the Foren­sic Sci­ence Cen­tre for the au­top­sy.

Alexan­der told Guardian Me­dia that her son’s cause of death was list­ed as as­phyx­ia due to chok­ing, due to mud and soil in his res­pi­ra­to­ry tract.

She said due to ad­vanced de­com­po­si­tion of the body, it was not de­ter­mined whether there were ex­ter­nal in­juries.

How­ev­er, Alexan­der be­lieves her son was lured to his death by a per­son or per­sons he knew.

“He was fol­low­ing the wrong friends. He used to smoke mar­i­jua­na. I was study­ing what­ev­er hap­pened (to him) maybe con­cern drugs com­ing in on that side or it had some­thing (to do with his death),” she said.

Alexan­der, a sin­gle moth­er, said her son grew up in East Dry Riv­er, Port-of-Spain, but moved to south Trinidad more than two years ago be­cause a war­rant was out for his ar­rest for a lar­ce­ny in­ci­dent.

How­ev­er, she said her son, a mar­ket ven­dor, used to vis­it her in Port-of-Spain.

She last saw him a few months ago and spoke to him on De­cem­ber 27.

Alexan­der said Gokool’s girl­friend told his aunt that he left a mes­sage that he was “go­ing to han­dle some­thing in the morn­ing” and of he didn’t re­turn to make a re­port at the po­lice sta­tion.

Gokool al­so left in­struc­tions for her to give the po­lice a par­tic­u­lar name. Alexan­der said some­one who knew him claimed Gokool went to “scrape co­conut and or­ange.”

Alexan­der said she tried her best with her son.

“I won­der if there was more I could have done to keep him on the straight and nar­row. It is not easy. You make chil­dren and not their minds. The friends they want to be around and all that is how they get them­selves in trou­ble,” she said.

Not­ing that chil­dren be­have a cer­tain way at home and an­oth­er way at school, she ad­vised par­ents to “pop in” in school and ob­serve their chil­dren’s be­hav­iour.

“It is sad, he is my first son. Some might say it was in­evitable. He nev­er used to take ad­vice, you talk to him he nev­er used to lis­ten,” she lament­ed.

Gokool was liv­ing in a forest­ed area in Chatham, po­lice said.

The Hunters Search and Res­cue Team and po­lice of­fi­cers searched for him af­ter he was re­port­ed miss­ing.

A re­port stat­ed that around 1 pm on Jan­u­ary 26, Sgt Khan and South West­ern Di­vi­sion Task Force of­fi­cers were pa­trolling the Chatham area when they got in­for­ma­tion from an anony­mous source of sev­er­al bod­ies seen near a mud vol­cano in Chatham.

The of­fi­cers trekked three miles west of Chatham Beach then came up­on a dirt road that led them 500 me­ters in­to the for­est to the vol­cano. In­ves­ti­ga­tions are con­tin­u­ing.