KEVON FELMINE

Se­nior Re­porter

kevon.felmine@guardian.co.tt

An anx­ious Williamsville fam­i­ly is plead­ing for the safe re­turn of miss­ing busi­ness­man Kelvin Sama­roo af­ter his sil­ver Nis­san Almera was found aban­doned on a lone­ly road in Bar­rack­pore days af­ter he dis­ap­peared.

Sama­roo, 51, pro­pri­etor of Copy Rite Sta­tionery Sup­plies on Rush­worth Street, San Fer­nan­do, was last seen around 9 pm on Fri­day when his broth­er, Shel­don Sama­roo, ob­served his ve­hi­cle trav­el­ling be­hind his along Es­mer­al­da Main Road. Ac­cord­ing to the po­lice re­port, the two con­tin­ued along Union Road, Mara­bel­la, be­fore Shel­don turned in­to Bat­too Av­enue while Kelvin drove west and was not seen again.

His sis­ter, who asked that her name not be pub­lished, said the fam­i­ly had al­so seen him ear­li­er that evening af­ter he vis­it­ed her home in Williamsville to check on prepa­ra­tions for a prayer gath­er­ing sched­uled for the fol­low­ing day.

“It was Fri­day night, and he came across to check on me be­cause I was hav­ing a lit­tle prayer and want­ed to see if every­thing was ready. I told him yes, and he said he was go­ing home to wash clothes. That was the last time I spoke with him,” she said.

Alarm bells rang on Sat­ur­day when Sama­roo failed to at­tend the gath­er­ing.

“I even put out food for him be­cause he was sup­posed to come by me for prayers. We kept call­ing and mes­sag­ing him, but there was no re­sponse. That is when my sis­ter and I re­alised some­thing was wrong.”

The fam­i­ly searched for him over the week­end, check­ing his busi­ness place be­cause he of­ten worked ir­reg­u­lar hours, in­clud­ing week­ends, while as­sist­ing clients with Cana­di­an and Unit­ed States visa ap­point­ments. When they were still un­able to con­tact him, a miss­ing per­son re­port was of­fi­cial­ly lodged at the Gas­par­il­lo Po­lice Sta­tion on Mon­day morn­ing.

His sis­ter said rel­a­tives lat­er learnt that his ve­hi­cle had been tracked us­ing GPS tech­nol­o­gy and that po­lice con­firmed it had been found aban­doned on a back road in Bar­rack­pore.

Al­though the lo­ca­tion was trou­bling, she said Sama­roo of­ten trav­elled to dif­fer­ent com­mu­ni­ties while car­ry­ing out char­i­ta­ble acts and help­ing Venezue­lan mi­grants.

“He used to do a lot of char­i­ta­ble work and was ac­cus­tomed to de­liv­er­ing food and gro­ceries to peo­ple. He was al­ways help­ing oth­ers, so hear­ing that his car was in Bar­rack­pore did not im­me­di­ate­ly seem un­usu­al.”

She de­scribed her broth­er as a pri­vate per­son who had re­cent­ly con­fid­ed that work had been stress­ful but had nev­er in­di­cat­ed he in­tend­ed to dis­ap­pear.

“Ac­tu­al­ly, it is re­al­ly chal­leng­ing right now. He was go­ing through a lot and con­fid­ed that he was stressed with work, but he had a strong mind­set. We are pray­ing for him to come home.”

Po­lice de­scribe Sama­roo as be­ing of East In­di­an de­scent, about 5 feet 9 inch­es tall, brown in com­plex­ion and of medi­um build, with short, grey­ing hair and brown eyes. He has a vi­tili­go scar over his left eye and pso­ri­a­sis scars on both el­bows.

His fam­i­ly is ap­peal­ing to any­one with in­for­ma­tion that could as­sist in­ves­ti­ga­tors in lo­cat­ing him to con­tact the po­lice.