Woman's corpse in bushes, DNA test to identify body

Homicide detectives will have to go the way of science to identify the decomposed, mutilated body of a woman which was discovered in Santa Flora on Wednesday. The body is thought to be that of missing mother Anita Mohammed, but her relatives were yesterday unable to identify the body because of the advanced state of decomposition.

Police sources yesterday said they will have to depend on DNA tests to come up with an identity. In the meantime, the body remains on ice at the Forensic Science Centre (FSC) in St James since an autopsy is still to be done. Relatives of Mohammed are expected to give DNA samples to investigators which along with samples taken from the body, will be sent to labs either in the United States or the United Kingdom to facilitate tests to ascertain an identity.

This process is expected to take months and in the meantime Mohammed’s family remain in limbo, wondering whether she is alive or dead. Mohammed, 45, was last seen in her black Toyota Hilux in Chaguanas on December 19. She told relatives she had visited a friend and was going to the supermarket before heading back to her Raphael Road, Freeport home.

At about 10.30 am on Wednesday, a Petrotrin employee was at Petrotrin Oil Field Road in Santa Flora, checking on the wells in the area, when the body was discovered. It had apparently been mutilated and was in an advanced state of decomposition. In response to a report yesterday, which suggested that phone records at TSTT might contain information which would assist in finding Mohammed, Graeme Suite, senior public relations manager, repeated that releasing the information would require a court order. He also lambasted the earlier reports, calling them misleading and one-sided.

“The newspaper’s wholesale adoption of the daughter’s side of this tragic story gave credibility to the falsehood that police can simply turn up at TSTT under the guise of an investigation and demand private customer information be handed over and TSTT should comply,” he said. “There is a reason that news organisations say it is better to be right than to be first.”

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