Kevon Felmine

Se­nior Re­porter

kevon.felmine@guardian.co.tt

In­ves­ti­ga­tors sus­pect drugs may have played a role in the hor­rif­ic mur­der of Siparia grand­moth­er Joanne Estick, whose sev­ered head was dis­cov­ered at the road­side last Thurs­day. How­ev­er, no ar­rests have been made, and the rest of her body re­mains miss­ing.

Estick, 60, was last seen alive around 12.30 pm on March 12, walk­ing through Sen­non Vil­lage, Siparia. Just days lat­er, around 1.15 pm on Thurs­day, Cpl Patrice and PC Cum­mings of the South West­ern Di­vi­sion Task Force were on pa­trol in the area when some­one di­rect­ed them to a green bag in a drain at Sen­non Vil­lage #3.

Up­on ar­rival, the of­fi­cers found a fly-cov­ered bag rest­ing on a con­crete drain by the road­side. In­side, they dis­cov­ered a small white plas­tic cool­er, par­tial­ly open, con­tain­ing Estick’s sev­ered head.

Friends and rel­a­tives re­vealed that Estick had strug­gled with drug ad­dic­tion for years, in­clud­ing the use of crack co­caine. They de­scribed her as a fa­mil­iar fig­ure in the com­mu­ni­ty, of­ten seen wan­der­ing the streets late in­to the night.

De­spite her strug­gles, they in­sist­ed she was not vi­o­lent and fre­quent­ly took on odd jobs for neigh­bours.

The Hunters Search and Res­cue Team, led by Cap­tain Val­lence Ramb­harat, has been search­ing for Estick’s body while en­gag­ing with vil­lagers for any leads.

Ramb­harat not­ed that his team en­coun­tered an in­di­vid­ual who might hold valu­able in­for­ma­tion for the po­lice.

“We passed on a num­ber to the po­lice, so we are wait­ing for fur­ther guid­ance to see if any­thing could come out of it,” Ramb­harat said.

The team has scoured ar­eas off Coo­ra Road, Quinam Beach, the oil­fields, Mendez Trace, and Mur­ray Trace, fo­cus­ing on known dump­ing sites from pre­vi­ous search­es. De­spite their ef­forts, they have yet to un­cov­er any ad­di­tion­al ev­i­dence.

Ramb­harat ex­pressed con­cern over the alarm­ing fre­quen­cy of bizarre killings in the area.