A frenzy of sudden activity in the green and white building that Junior Emmanuel was watching, froze, realizing he had been seen.
He felt like holding his head and crying again, even screaming, after waiting for ages in the heat, across the street, eagerly studying the twenties of big girls completely hidden behind ‘ w heavy burqas, arriving for their usual devotions on Friday. He too had prayed intently, but in recognition of a familiar glow, a soft voice, a petite lily figure, a glimpse of delicate fingers, a light skin – anything really that could give him hope that his precious daughter was still alive.
The latest anonymous caller had told him that a powerful imam in the Central Trinidad area had ordered the kidnappers to make the shocking Sharday Emmanuel, 20, his fourth wife. Hiding in his vehicle outside the mosque, two years ago, Mr Emmanuel acknowledged that if the men came out armed and hostile, assuming the worst, he could be in mortal danger being some kind of middle-aged pervert, the Lord forbade.
As he paused, asking himself for the seventeenth time, “Boy, what are you doing?” the depressed father accepted that there were many too
many weirdos lurking everywhere in his homeland, including some callous souls trying to exploit his despair. And yet, he dares not ignore his phone ringing, the endless tips, recommendations and information that lead nowhere. Mr Emmanuel keeps his daughter’s photographs, with the sweet smile, hazel eyes and thick curly tresses splashed on his social media pages and those of Trinidad and Tobago missing persons but the long list never ends , so her story slips further and further down, away from the volatile thought and interest of the public, as the murderous atrocity or the latest horrific discovery becomes the focus.
He is trying to get reporters to rework his lonely quest for hard-to-find answers again, but they also want a new angle. So Mr Emmanuel loses track of the number of calls he has made to the Police, wishing for the day or night when they can finally say something definite to him but the lead investigators continue to change, and every time he has to repeat his story. He doesn’t really care, telling his story, his daughter’s story, how she lived, how she was loved and loved, and maybe how she died, to anyone who would listening, as I did this week.
However, the investigation files are so numerous that the case named Sharday Emmanuel is missing but he wants to believe that it is temporarily lost, hidden among the others, to be discovered if there is no but time, fresh determination and a need for manpower and resources to search the frightening pile of blood, heartbreak and tears. The Emmanuels are eager to hear from the Commissioner that the authorities have not forgotten that their only daughter went missing on June 27, 2018, while visiting her boyfriend, backstage in Longdenville, in the densely populated borough Chaguanas, about 15 miles or 24 km southeast of Port-of-Spain, the country’s capital, so their phones are always on.
A delivery driver with a local fast-food chain, Mr Emmanuel and his wife Marilyn, a clerk, are simple, ordinary people, with no high-level contacts or helpful relationships in the protective or armed services. So the bereaved parents do everything they can on their own, to carry out the unnecessary search for what happened to Sharday, named for the successful Nigerian-born British singer Sade, their little girl so beautiful.
They kept an eye on the human bones that are all too often found in busy and remote areas here, working from their humble home that is not the same, at Mamoral Number One, a tight-knit rural community in the deep central part the country. . Following a year of endless searching along roads, gorges and rivers, Mr Emmanuel spied a news story in 2019 about a single skull and burnt remains found in the isolated isolated forests of Santa Flora, near the former Palo Seco oilfield.
He phoned the Police, pleaded with them to see the discovery. When he went in, the female officer asked him, not in an unkind tone, “Before she even showed me the pictures, ‘You’re sure, you can handle this?'” In the third photograph, she acknowledged only a piece of burnt cloth. , specifically colored with tingling in shades of beige and brown soil. Mr Emmanuel remembers the moment, “I put my hand in my mouth and said, ‘Oh my God!'”
Sharday loved colorful clothes. It was the only piece of the long skirt that survived the Wednesday it disappeared. The bag of bones went to the Forensic Department for DNA testing, with a crew taking a hairbrush and other personal items from his daughter’s room to test them. Today, he is still anxiously awaiting official confirmation that would take the investigation of a missing person report into manslaughter, but he wonders if he will have to wait another 15 years as in the ongoing case of the six-year-old Sean Luke, allegedly murdered by two teenagers. At a recent virtual hearing, the State said it has not yet applied to receive the evidence, as the DNA analysis was excellent, although samples were sent for testing back in 2006.
Mr Emmanuel talks about the voice notes that a friend of Sharday’s forwarded, reporting that she has wanted to break up with her partner since he was aggressive. “I’m going to tell my dad everything that’s going on,” he declared, but never got the chance. Now the father blames himself for trying to give his daughter independence to stand alone, while providing the support to study and become a nursing assistant, because she loves animals naturally and is helping people. “I should have followed my vision from the beginning,” he admits.
“I had pleaded with him before finding the bones, say something, if you know anything at all,” adding, “I told him, ‘You know the kind of girl Sharday was , she didn’t deserve to be lying in a drain, or in any bamboo piece, she doesn’t deserve to be left out there, we don’t know what happened to her. ”But the young man shook his head and didn’t say a word. “My heart started beating so fast, I knew. I just walked out of the room. ”
Days ago, the Emmanuels traveled to the northeastern borough of Arima, for a public holiday, joining hundreds across Trinidad praying for the safe return of kidnapped Andrea Bharrat, 23, a graduate of the University of the West Indies. They reached out to Ms Bharrat’s relatives, jointly lighting a candle for Andrea, an only child; Ashanti Riley, 18, was killed last December, Sharday and all the women murdered so far, the lost and the unknown have yet to be found. Andrea’s battered body was recovered the next afternoon from the deserted heights of Aripo in Sangre Grande.
Junior Emmanuel shares Mr Bharrat’s torture and grief with his father. While he is encouraged by people’s reaction to the tragedy and hopes that “Something will be done, to bring justice to all of us, I pray all the time, it keeps me going . ” He advises parents, “Keep talking to your children, and trust nobody, no one, nobody …”
ID understands why the Emmanuels permanently left the decorated Christmas tree in their daughter’s room, with all her clothes intact in the cupboards. Four months ago, their son Cassiel became a father, but they failed, as always, Aunt Sharday “who would have been so excited and overjoyed.”