KEVON FELMINE

Se­nior Re­porter

kevon.felmine@guardian.co.tt

A re­newed search for miss­ing Williamsville busi­ness­man Kelvin Sama­roo has so far yield­ed no break­through, with rel­a­tives con­firm­ing that he re­mained un­ac­count­ed for up to yes­ter­day as po­lice and vol­un­teer teams con­tin­ued in­ves­ti­ga­tions across south­ern Trinidad.

Sama­roo, 51, pro­pri­etor of Copy Rite Sta­tionery Sup­plies in San Fer­nan­do, was last seen on Fri­day night along the Union Road, Mara­bel­la, ac­cord­ing to po­lice records and fam­i­ly ac­counts.

He has not been seen or heard from since.

In­for­ma­tion ob­tained by Guardian Me­dia in­di­cates that CCTV footage cap­tured a man out­side Sama­roo’s busi­ness on Fri­day af­ter­noon, pac­ing while on a phone.

The in­di­vid­ual re­port­ed­ly left the area around 4 pm and re­turned close to 6 pm be­fore be­ing picked up by a ve­hi­cle. In­ves­ti­ga­tors are treat­ing the footage as part of the broad­er time­line be­ing pieced to­geth­er.

They be­lieve Sama­roo may have re­turned home lat­er that day be­fore re­ceiv­ing a call that prompt­ed him to leave again on Fri­day night, short­ly be­fore he dis­ap­peared.

That ver­sion of events is be­ing weighed along­side the of­fi­cial po­lice time­line, which places his last con­firmed sight­ing around 9 pm when he was ob­served along the Es­mer­al­da Main Road cor­ri­dor.

Fur­ther de­vel­op­ments emerged in re­la­tion to Sama­roo’s ve­hi­cle, which was part of a rent-to-own arrange­ment.

Sources said pay­ments were typ­i­cal­ly made on Sat­ur­days. Af­ter he failed to re­turn home, the ve­hi­cle own­er was alert­ed and used GPS track­ing to lo­cate the sil­ver Nis­san Almera on La­goon Road in Bar­rack­pore. The sys­tem was then re­mote­ly dis­abled be­fore the car was lat­er found aban­doned by po­lice.

The dis­cov­ery of the ve­hi­cle has deep­ened con­cerns among rel­a­tives, who have main­tained a con­stant search ef­fort since he was re­port­ed miss­ing on Mon­day.

They con­tin­ue to de­scribe him as a pri­vate in­di­vid­ual who lived alone in Williamsville and was known to fre­quent­ly trav­el around South Trinidad for work and com­mu­ni­ty-re­lat­ed as­sis­tance.

Search ef­forts have al­so ex­pand­ed on the ground. Hunters Search and Res­cue Team cap­tain Val­lence Ramb­harat con­firmed that mem­bers con­duct­ed op­er­a­tions on Tues­day and were prepar­ing to re­sume search­es in the Gas­par­il­lo and Williamsville dis­tricts when weath­er con­di­tions im­proved.

De­spite mul­ti­ple lines of in­quiry, in­clud­ing CCTV analy­sis, ve­hi­cle track­ing da­ta and com­mu­ni­ty search­es, there has been no con­firmed break­through in the case. Po­lice in­ves­ti­ga­tions are con­tin­u­ing.

Sama­roo is de­scribed as be­ing of East In­di­an de­scent, about 5 feet 9 inch­es tall, medi­um build, with brown com­plex­ion, short grey­ing hair, and iden­ti­fi­able marks in­clud­ing vi­tili­go over his left eye and pso­ri­a­sis scars on both el­bows.

His fam­i­ly is again urg­ing any­one with in­for­ma­tion that could as­sist in­ves­ti­ga­tors to con­tact the po­lice as the search con­tin­ues across south­ern Trinidad.