47-year-old Edna Plummer, vanished without a trace in the twin-island republic of Trinidad and Tobago in January and he daughter ALISHA Riley and her four siblings are worried.
According to Riley, her mother arrived at a Chaguanas home she shared with another Jamaican woman on the evening of Friday, January 28 about 6:00 pm and hurriedly dressed to go out with a Trinidadian man. She has not been seen since. She was wearing a blue denim skirt, white slippers and a blue top. "We are very worried. She has just vanished and that is not like my mother," Riley told the Sunday Observer.
The distressed daughter still has hope that her mother is alive but says the police in that country are dragging their feet in probing her mother's mysterious disappearance.
"The Trinidad police are not doing all they can, maybe it's because she is a Jamaican. Everyone has been hush-hush," Riley said. Her brother, Garcia Riley, was scheduled to visit his mother in the land of the hummingbird just days after she disappeared. He spent a month in the country and, like his sister, is disappointed with the way the matter is being handled by the Trinidad police.
"The Trinidad police not handling the matter right. I was there for how long and they have not come to me with anything substantial. They say they were going to call me but they have not," he said. However, he conceded that the Trinidadian cops brought to him an item of jewellery and a pair of slippers that belonged to his mother and arrested a man, identified as Michael Joseph, who was at the premises where the items were found.
A police officer at the Chaguanas Police Station told the Sunday Observer yesterday that Edna Plummer is still listed as a missing person. "She is still listed as missing. The officer investigating in the case said he is getting no co-operation from her relatives and loved ones. He is not getting any useful information from them. We do not know if she is in Jamaica or what," said the cop, who did not identify himself. But Alisha Riley did not take kindly to the Trinidadian policeman's attitude as, she said, it should be common knowledge that she has no relatives in that country. "I don't understand. The woman who she lived with has been questioned by them, and her boss, Mr Harrigin Badall, told us that he is in contact with them," Riley said.
The police in Trinidad have confirmed that they arrested three persons, two men and a woman in connection with the case, but released them after a matter of days. Riley said the man who went out with her mother admitted to the police that he put her on a taxi with his other male friend and that was the last he saw of her. Plummer left her Portmore, St Catherine home last August to seek employment in Trinidad.
She was introduced to the job opportunity by another Jamaican woman whom she lived with until January when the two had a dispute and she left to live with another woman, identified only as 'Cavel', in Chaguanas, Riley said. Plummer worked as a security guard with the BK Trucking company in an area known as Diego Martin.