Two el­der­ly men, who were re­port­ed miss­ing af­ter a vis­it to the Tu­na­puna area, have been found dead. Their bod­ies were dis­cov­ered in­side a burnt ve­hi­cle in North Oropouche yes­ter­day.

Po­lice said the grim dis­cov­ery was made at Tapana Road, off Va­len­cia Old Road, where of­fi­cers, as­sist­ed by the Hunters’ Search and Res­cue Team led by Sham­sudeen Ayube, lo­cat­ed the burnt out ve­hi­cle with two bod­ies in­side.

The vic­tims were iden­ti­fied by rel­a­tives as Ken­neth Gill, of Trinci­ty and Bernard “Sumir” Ma­habir, of Prescott Lane, Tu­na­puna. The dis­cov­ery of their bod­ies came less than 24 hours af­ter they were re­port­ed miss­ing, prompt­ing a search by rel­a­tives and mem­bers of the pub­lic.

Ini­tial re­ports in­di­cate that Gill and Ma­habir were last seen on Sun­day at Lopinot Vil­lage. Some­time af­ter 5 pm, they left the area in a white Nis­san Ti­i­da, reg­is­tra­tion num­ber PCX 9805, with Gill dri­ving.

A rel­a­tive re­port­ed­ly saw them leav­ing, but they nev­er reached their in­tend­ed des­ti­na­tion. At­tempts to con­tact them failed, and the mat­ter was re­port­ed to po­lice.

Of­fi­cers at­tached to the Arou­ca Po­lice Sta­tion be­gan in­quiries in­to their dis­ap­pear­ance, which took a trag­ic turn with yes­ter­day’s dis­cov­ery.

Dis­trict Med­ical Of­fi­cer Dr Gill vis­it­ed the scene, made an of­fi­cial pro­nounce­ment of death and or­dered the re­moval of the bod­ies to the San­gre Grande Hos­pi­tal mor­tu­ary. A post-mortem ex­am­i­na­tion is ex­pect­ed to be con­duct­ed at the Foren­sic Sci­ence Cen­tre in St James.

Al­so vis­it­ing the scene were W/In­sp Sylvester and Sgts Ra­moutar, Radikissoon and Bis­son, of the Arou­ca Homi­cide Bu­reau, along with of­fi­cers from the Va­len­cia and San­gre Grande po­lice dis­tricts.

In­ves­ti­ga­tors are work­ing to de­ter­mine the cir­cum­stances sur­round­ing the killings, in­clud­ing how the men end­ed up in North Oropouche and whether the burnt ve­hi­cle was the same one they were last seen in.