Two days af­ter Able Sea­man Kieron Si­mon dis­ap­peared when a nar­co-sub­ma­rine in Grena­di­an wa­ters sank dur­ing a drug bust, lo­cal au­thor­i­ties have as­sured they are do­ing all they can to as­sist in the ef­fort to lo­cate him as ef­forts are be­ing in­ten­si­fied.

Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter Fitzger­ald Hinds yes­ter­day said, “The TTCG has gone in­to high gear, as the search and res­cue op­er­a­tion has been in­ten­si­fied.”

He added, “Its per­son­nel are in col­lec­tive pain and com­mis­er­a­tions for him and his fam­i­ly. Af­ter all, he is re­put­ed to very pro­fes­sion­al and per­son­able mem­ber, he met this sit­u­a­tion in the ex­e­cu­tion of his du­ty to pro­tect the peo­ple of Trinidad and To­ba­go.”

“More ef­fort is un­der­way, to lo­cate the miss­ing sailor; and the ves­sel. Where use­ful and ap­plic­a­ble, best in class tech­nol­o­gy is be­ing utilised.”

Si­mon, the fa­ther of a three-year-old boy, re­port­ed­ly dis­ap­peared on Feb­ru­ary 21, dur­ing a multi­na­tion­al drug bust off the coast of Grena­da.

Tragedy struck af­ter Si­mon re­port­ed­ly board­ed the nar­co-sub­ma­rine that sur­faced dur­ing a counter-traf­fick­ing train­ing ex­er­cise with re­gion­al se­cu­ri­ty agen­cies, which was said to be car­ry­ing 1.3 tonnes of co­caine aboard.

It was al­leged that Si­mon, along with an­oth­er of­fi­cer, both board­ed the sub­ma­rine fol­low­ing the safe re­moval of three Colom­bian na­tion­als as they car­ried out a check for any­one else on board.

It was claimed that rough seas caused the sub­mersible to sink sud­den­ly, trap­ping Si­mon in­side, whilst the sec­ond of­fi­cer who had re­mained top-side, was re­port­ed­ly thrown in­to the sea.