The body of Lance Cor­po­ral Kei­th Pear­son sur­faced at Mara­cas Beach yes­ter­day, days af­ter he dis­ap­peared be­neath the wa­ter whilst swim­ming.

The bloat­ed body of the 40-year-old, which bore wounds to the eyes, was spot­ted float­ing in the wa­ter around 7.50 am, by a beach chair at­ten­dant who was out set­ting up ear­ly.

The young man no­ti­fied of­fi­cers who were close by, as he en­tered the wa­ter and pulled the body to shore.

The sol­dier’s body re­port­ed­ly sur­faced in the vicin­i­ty of Un­cle Sam’s Bake & Shark, which is where Pear­son would have last been seen.

The 40-year-old fa­ther of two chil­dren aged nine and 11, is be­lieved to have suf­fered dif­fi­cul­ty while bathing caus­ing him to slip be­neath the waves around 8.30 am on April 1.

Min­utes af­ter ex­am­in­ing the body which had been clad in a pair of black shorts, an of­fi­cer of the T&T De­fence Force (TTDF) pos­i­tive­ly iden­ti­fied it as the miss­ing Spe­cial Forces sol­dier yes­ter­day.

In­ves­ti­ga­tors have so far record­ed state­ments from sev­er­al peo­ple who were present on the day that Pear­son dis­ap­peared – as well as from those who were around yes­ter­day.

A se­nior of­fi­cial said they were treat­ing the in­ci­dent as a sus­pect­ed drown­ing.

On Wednes­day, rel­a­tives de­scribed Pear­son as a “Live­ly and good-na­tured per­son who liked to en­joy him­self.”

—An­na-Lisa Paul