Sister cries for missing Shindlar

“PLEASE send my big sister home to us, please. I am begging you. I have not been able to sleep properly at night since she was taken from us,” 14-year-old Shantay Shallow wept. She is the sister of missing 16-year-old schoolgirl Shindlar Cuffy.

Standing at the side of her mother Shondel Shallow, she wiped her tears during an interview at the family’s home yesterday. “If you see this story, Shindlar, please, I want you to know I love you so much. I miss you. I have spent my first Christmas without you and I can’t see my myself spending any more holidays without you.”

Shantay said she and her sister were close. “She was the one I would go to if I needed advice. She was like my best friend, and I cannot understand why she was taken from us.” Shantay is a student of Marabella East Secondary, the same school as her sister.

Shallow said her daughter’s disappearance has also taken a toll on her health. A few days ago she collapsed after having a seizure. “It has become too unbearable for me. I am beginning to get sick really bad. All I can think about is this woman called Clare Du Bois who knows where my daughter is.”

A week ago an e-mail was sent to Newsday by someone purporting to be Pastor Clare Du Bois. In it “Du Bois” advised Cuffy’s mother to “legally emancipate her daughter, so she cannot be confined like that again.” The tearful mother said she does not know who or where else to turn again.

“I know my daughter is right in this country. Someone has her captive, but I don’t know where and it hurts me more and more every day. I feel like I am living a nightmare which I cannot awake from.”

Last November, Cuffy, a fifth-form student, went missing. On that day she and Shallow left their home at Rosehill Street, Claxton Bay and walked to the Southern Main Road to wait for a taxi to take Cuffy to school. A few minutes later, a white AD wagon taxi stopped with two other passengers, and Cuffy got in.

At about 3.30 pm, Shallow became worried when her daughter had not returned home, and called Cuffy’s cell phone, but the call went to voicemail. Shallow went to the school and learnt that her daughter had not shown up for classes.

Cuffy is described as having albinism. Her hair is blonde and she was last seen wearing her school uniform – a white shirt and blue skirt and tie. She also had a coloured knapsack containing her schoolbooks.