JENSEN LA VENDE

Se­nior Re­porter

jensen.lavende@guardian.co.tt

The broth­er of miss­ing Coast Guard sailor Kieron Si­mon is urg­ing the State to seek as­sis­tance from the Unit­ed States, which cur­rent­ly has a mil­i­tary pres­ence in the South­ern Caribbean, to help re­trieve his broth­er’s body.

Si­mon went miss­ing in Feb­ru­ary dur­ing a joint drug in­ter­dic­tion ex­er­cise off the coast of Grena­da. On Feb­ru­ary 21, he re­port­ed­ly board­ed a nar­co-sub­ma­rine that lat­er sank while he was still in­side.

An­oth­er sailor who was al­so aboard the ves­sel was thrown in­to the sea but was res­cued. To date, nei­ther the sub­ma­rine nor Si­mon’s body has been re­cov­ered.

Speak­ing with Guardian Me­dia at his La Ro­maine home on Mon­day, Si­mon’s broth­er, Kelvon, said the Gov­ern­ment should use every avail­able re­source to re­cov­er the ves­sel and bring clo­sure to the fam­i­ly.

“I don’t know why the Gov­ern­ment hasn’t asked for help. Try to get the sub up or ask for as­sis­tance to bring it up or do some­thing. The US is here now—ask for as­sis­tance,” he plead­ed.

It was pre­vi­ous­ly re­port­ed that the sub­ma­rine had been lo­cat­ed, but ef­forts to re­trieve it and its con­tents proved chal­leng­ing.

The Unit­ed States has main­tained a mil­i­tary pres­ence in the Caribbean since Au­gust, as part of op­er­a­tions tar­get­ing nar­co-traf­fick­ers. Those mis­sions have re­port­ed­ly re­sult­ed in at least 27 deaths in six sep­a­rate in­ci­dents, in­clud­ing two T&T na­tion­als.

Kelvon said the fam­i­ly has re­ceived lit­tle com­mu­ni­ca­tion from au­thor­i­ties about ef­forts to lo­cate his broth­er or re­cov­er his re­mains—an on­go­ing source of an­guish.

“Nine months and no­body is say­ing any­thing. My broth­er is just miss­ing, and that’s it. It’s re­al­ly, re­al­ly frus­trat­ing. It’s not on­ly me—you have aunts, un­cles, nieces, nephews—every­body’s in a mess. Every day we go by with no an­swers,” he said.

He added that the emo­tion­al toll has been com­pound­ed by the fi­nan­cial strain on Kieron’s im­me­di­ate fam­i­ly.

“The fam­i­ly just wants clo­sure,” he said, not­ing that since his broth­er’s dis­ap­pear­ance, he has had lit­tle di­rect con­tact from the State or the Coast Guard.

Guardian Me­dia reached out to the Coast Guard for com­ment on Kelvon’s ap­peal but re­ceived no re­sponse up to late yes­ter­day.

Kelvon said while the fam­i­ly hopes to hold a fu­ner­al or memo­r­i­al ser­vice, the lack of in­for­ma­tion from of­fi­cials con­tin­ues to de­lay any plans and deep­en their grief.