Over a month af­ter his death, a Tu­na­puna man’s fam­i­ly has re­ceived cus­tody of his body. How­ev­er, rel­a­tives are still call­ing for an­swers over what led to re­peat­ed de­lays in the first place.

Ka­reem St Louis, 25, was found dead on a par­cel of land near an El Do­ra­do school on De­cem­ber 4, 2024, with sev­er­al in­juries, in­clud­ing a no­tice­able wound un­der his chest.

His body was tak­en to the Er­ic Williams Med­ical Sci­ences Com­plex’s mor­tu­ary for tem­po­rary stor­age and lat­er to the Foren­sic Sci­ence Cen­tre (FSC), St James, for an au­top­sy. How­ev­er, rel­a­tives claimed the process could not be com­plet­ed, as po­lice of­fi­cers as­signed to wit­ness the au­top­sy did not have St Louis’ med­ical notes to pro­vide to of­fi­cials at the cen­tre.

For over a month, St Louis’ body was trans­port­ed back and forth from an Arou­ca Fu­ner­al Agency, where it was stored, to the FSC, un­til the au­top­sy was even­tu­al­ly per­formed on Tues­day morn­ing.

St Louis’ moth­er, Car­la St Louis, told Guardian Me­dia that while she was re­lieved she had fi­nal­ly re­ceived cus­tody of her son’s body, she was still an­gry be­cause the body be­gan to de­com­pose.

“If this had been a min­is­ter’s son or daugh­ter, there would not have been any kinds of prob­lems like this.

“I am grate­ful he can be laid to rest, but what hap­pened to him and how they treat­ed him isn’t right,” she said.

“I don’t even want to look at the con­di­tion of the body be­cause I know how bad it (the de­com­po­si­tion) prob­a­bly is.”

Ac­cord­ing to the post-mortem re­port, St Louis’ cause of death was due to mul­ti­ple blunt force in­juries.

His med­ical records showed he was di­ag­nosed with a psy­chot­ic dis­or­der in 2017, and had sev­er­al le­gal is­sues due to lar­ce­ny and house-break­ings, for which he was ad­mit­ted to the St Ann’s Psy­chi­atric Hos­pi­tal.

In 2019, he was ar­rest­ed for en­ter­ing a re­strict­ed area at the Pi­ar­co In­ter­na­tion­al Air­port af­ter telling of­fi­cials he was go­ing to vis­it his grand­moth­er in the US and fight in the Viet­nam War. He last sought treat­ment at the St Ann’s Psy­chi­atric Hos­pi­tal in June 2024.

Re­spond­ing to Guardian Me­dia on Tues­day via What­sApp, a spokesper­son from the TTPS Cor­po­rate Com­mu­ni­ca­tions Unit ex­plained that the de­lays oc­curred due to the ab­sence of St Louis’ med­ical doc­u­ments, ad­mit­ting that they “took a lit­tle while” to arrange.

The of­fi­cial said the num­ber of mur­ders oc­cur­ring al­so con­tributed to the de­lay.

St Louis said Ka­reem will be cre­mat­ed.