Toco brothers find long-lost sibling

Elroy Stewart, 61, and his half-brother Eden Thomas, 58, visited Newsday in February asking for the public's help in finding their “outside” brother and sister.

On Tuesday Thomas was delighted to announced they have found their brother.

His name is Anton Thomas of Carenage. He is 57 and is a police officer.

Anton Thomas told them he has a sister but she is not related to his brothers.

“I thought I was the baby in the family, but I’m not any more,” Eden Thomas told Newsday.

He said he was surprised to hear Anton didn’t carry Stewart as his last name. and wondered if they were related on both sides of the family, as they share a surname.

“I was thinking he and I was family, because on my mother's side I’m related to Thomas in Tobago. But he said no.”

Thomas told Newsday he got Anton's number "from a relative who he spoke to when he came looking for us last year. I called him and told him who I am, and I told him I and another brother were looking for him. I gave my other brother the number and he called him.

They met last Saturday in San Juan.

“We hugged him, because we were happy to meet in at last. We chatted for two hours. He said we were looking for him so many years.”

He said all three of them will be visiting Newsday soon to tell a new story.

The brother said they can now mend what was broken.

Stewart said in a previous interview that his father wasn’t a good role model and didn’t support his mother and three other children. He met Thomas as a child and learnt they were brothers, and despite the circumstances, his mother accepted Thomas as her own.

The two told Newsday they believed their half-siblings were originally from Carenage and shared the same father as them.

One of the brothers said the first and only time he met his half-brother and sister was 50 years ago when his father introduced them to him. He was 11 at the time and the other children were between eight and ten. He said he wasn't told their names but indistinctly remembers their dark skin.

In an update two weeks ago, Stewart told Newsday a man who refused to give his name had called with information on his relatives after Newsday published the story.

“He told me my sister lives in the US and he also knows my brother.

"He didn’t want to give me his name because he didn’t want to get too much involved. He said he knows this because he knew my father well.”

He said the man promised to pass the message on to the brother, who still lives in Trinidad. That was all the information he got.