The search is on­go­ing for Able Sea­man Ke­iron Si­mon, who was pulled un­der­wa­ter in­side a sink­ing ves­sel dur­ing a multi­na­tion­al drug bust in lo­cal wa­ters be­tween T&T and Grena­da on Thurs­day.

The op­er­a­tion po­ten­tial­ly pre­vent­ed 1.3 tonnes of co­caine from en­ter­ing the coun­try.

Min­is­ter of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Fitzger­ald Hinds and the T&T Coast Guard (TTCG) yes­ter­day con­firmed the dis­ap­pear­ance of Si­mon, who is a fa­ther to a three-year-old boy.

Hinds said his fam­i­ly has been briefed on the sit­u­a­tion.

“I, too, would like to ex­tend to them my deep con­cern and to share their wor­ry and pain at this stage,” Hinds told Guardian Me­dia.

He al­so ac­knowl­edged the brav­ery of na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty per­son­nel who put their lives on the line every day.

“We, at the lev­el of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty, un­der­stand that we call on these young and brave mem­bers of the De­fence Force, the po­lice ser­vice, the fire ser­vice, the prison ser­vice, to act in the way they are trained to and so on, too, to pro­tect us. And very un­for­tu­nate­ly, on some oc­ca­sions, and this is one of them, un­for­tu­nate cir­cum­stances de­vel­op aris­ing out of their brav­ery and their courage and their sense of du­ty to Trinidad and To­ba­go. It’s a rather sad state of af­fairs for all of us,” Hinds said.

He told Guardian Me­dia that the TTCG had been en­gaged in a counter-traf­fick­ing op­er­a­tion just off the is­land of Grena­da with in­ter­na­tion­al and re­gion­al part­ners at the time of the in­ci­dent.

“And in that con­text, two of our mar­itime as­sets, CG41 and CG23, were de­ployed, and they made it to the zone and the op­er­a­tion en­sued. And even­tu­al­ly, this very un­for­tu­nate cir­cum­stance de­vel­oped out of it.

“But in the whole op­er­a­tion, I am told that 1.3 tonnes of poi­son... what ap­pears to be the drug co­caine, was on its way to Trinidad and To­ba­go,” Hinds said.

In a me­dia re­lease yes­ter­day, the TTCG stat­ed that it had been con­duct­ing a board­ing ex­er­cise on a ves­sel of in­ter­est when the in­ci­dent oc­curred.

A TTCG pa­trol boat in­ter­cept­ed the ves­sel and trans­ferred three for­eign na­tion­als on­to the pa­trol boat for safe­keep­ing when the in­ter­cept­ed ves­sel be­gan tak­ing on wa­ter.

While this trans­fer was tak­ing place, Si­mon and an­oth­er sailor re­mained on­board the seized ves­sel. One of them at­tempt­ed to check whether there were any oth­er per­sons aboard, but be­fore he could do so, rough seas caused the ves­sel to sub­merge sud­den­ly. The sailor who had re­mained above deck was thrown in­to the wa­ter, while Si­mon be­came trapped in­side as the ves­sel dis­ap­peared be­neath the waves.

At­tempts were made to se­cure lines to the sink­ing ves­sel, but its size and rapid de­scent made this im­pos­si­ble. The coast guards­man thrown in­to the wa­ter was quick­ly res­cued, and search ef­forts re­main on­go­ing for his miss­ing col­league.

The TTCG reaf­firmed its com­mit­ment to com­bat­ting transna­tion­al crime and se­cur­ing the na­tion’s mar­itime bor­ders, stat­ing that fur­ther de­tails on the in­ci­dent would be pro­vid­ed as the sit­u­a­tion de­vel­ops.

An in­sid­er yes­ter­day re­vealed that the in­ci­dent has tak­en an emo­tion­al toll on Si­mon’s col­leagues. The source not­ed that Si­mon had been in the ser­vice for many years and had even trained of­fi­cers.

This marks the sec­ond ma­jor un­for­tu­nate in­ci­dent in­volv­ing the TTCG this year.

Last month, the Coast Guard lost a mys­tery pirogue con­tain­ing the de­com­pos­ing corpses of five uniden­ti­fied in­di­vid­u­als dur­ing a re­cov­ery op­er­a­tion.

That ves­sel, dis­cov­ered near the Cas­sia plat­form, slipped from a tow­line in rough seas east of Ma­yaro and drift­ed out of sight. De­spite ex­ten­sive search ef­forts, the TTCG could not re­lo­cate the pirogue, which it pre­sumed had sunk due to its se­vere­ly de­te­ri­o­rat­ed state.

That in­ci­dent was com­pared to the ghast­ly dis­cov­ery of a boat con­tain­ing the bod­ies of African mi­grants off the coast of To­ba­go in May 2021.

Venezue­lans miss­ing af­ter
boat bound for T&T sinks

Mean­while, lo­cal and Venezue­lan me­dia are re­port­ing that sev­er­al Venezue­lans are miss­ing at sea af­ter their boat sank off Ped­er­nales while en route to Trinidad on Thurs­day.

Un­con­firmed re­ports sug­gest that a one-year-old boy and oth­er chil­dren are among those miss­ing.

How­ev­er, TTCG PRO Lt Kadi­ja Lamy said yes­ter­day that there were no of­fi­cial re­ports of the in­ci­dent. As a re­sult, she could nei­ther con­firm nor de­ny the ac­cu­ra­cy of the claims.

Guardian Me­dia un­der­stands that the ves­sel sank with­in Venezue­lan wa­ters and au­thor­i­ties there have launched a search. How­ev­er, they have not yet re­quest­ed as­sis­tance from the TTCG, as they do not be­lieve the boat drift­ed in­to T&T’s wa­ters.

While the TTCG con­tin­ues to ver­i­fy the de­tails, of­fi­cials have seen so­cial me­dia re­ports of a ves­sel head­ing to Trinidad that cap­sized. How­ev­er, they have no con­firmed in­for­ma­tion re­gard­ing the num­ber of pas­sen­gers or their iden­ti­ties.

Ac­cord­ing to the Venezue­lan pub­li­ca­tion El Deltano, an un­of­fi­cial re­port sug­gests that 13 Venezue­lans have been res­cued from the ill-fat­ed ves­sel. The group had de­part­ed from Tu­cu­pi­ta, in the Delta Amacuro state, be­fore their ves­sel sank while still in Venezue­lan ter­ri­to­ry.

An­oth­er re­port states that the boat, which set sail on Feb­ru­ary 19 with an es­ti­mat­ed 15 pas­sen­gers, suf­fered a me­chan­i­cal fail­ure, leav­ing it adrift and at the mer­cy of rough seas.

It is be­lieved that one of the res­cued sur­vivors, a moth­er, lost two of her chil­dren in the tragedy.

Those res­cued were treat­ed at the Doña Cir­i­la Gascón Hos­pi­tal in Ped­er­nales and are said to be in sta­ble con­di­tion.

Au­thor­i­ties con­tin­ue their search ef­forts as des­per­ate fam­i­lies await news of their miss­ing loved ones.