Two years on, Claxton Bay teen Shindlar Cuffy still missing

Thursday, November 26 will mark two years since the disappearance of schoolgirl Shindlar Cuffy.

That morning in 2018 was the last time Cuffy's mother saw her, when she left for school.

Her family believes the police have forgotten Cuffy’s case, but they have vowed not to give up the search for her.

Cuffy’s grandmother Ingrid Shallow said, “Every year when November 26 comes around I feel as if I was reliving the day she disappeared. It was on that day I got the telephone call from her mother that my granddaughter did not return home from school that day.

"We have since celebrated two Christmas holidays without her, and now this year... it seems we will celebrate the third Christmas without her. The pain never stops really, but we keep the hope that one day she will come home. This is the only hope we have.

“Every week we go to different places with flyers and share to people. I show strangers a picture of my granddaughter and ask them if they have seen her. No one has ever seen her.

"But I am hoping that one day someone says yes and I can finally get the chance to hug my grandbaby."

Shallow said she has not slept comfortably for the last two years.

“When I close my eyes I think of her. I see her smile and hear her laughter our life will never be the same. I can't sleep knowing she is out there. She was just 16 when she disappeared now she is 18 years.”

On the day Cuffy vanished, she and her mother had walked to Southern Main Road, Claxton Bay, where she got into an AD wagon to go to school in Marabella. She never arrived.

In 2018 Shallow received a recording of the voice of a woman who identified herself as a religious leader by the name of "Mother Clare." She said Cuffy was alive but would not return and was doing God’s work.

The recording was sent to investigators who have since not been able to trace its origin.

In May, a girl resembling Cuffy was seen in a photograph of a group of people in a boat who had been rescued from a human-trafficking ring. But Shallow said the girl in the photo was not her daughter.

The Anti Kidnapping Squad intervened but to date, police have found no leads to help them find the missing teen.