Where's Shanice? Belmont woman missing since 2019; family want closure

Over a year ago, Shanice Cooper, who was then seven months pregnant, vanished and one relative believes if the police had responded like they did in the Andrea Bharatt case, the 30-year-old woman would have been found.

“Our family was cheated. We were the ones searching for Shanice and it was difficult. Shanice was expecting her first child, a boy,” Pauline Cooper, the aunt of the missing woman, said in an interview with Newsday.

“If our family was afforded the same measure of attention and urgency, I am almost certain that Shanice would have been found,” she said. Shanice, a worker at Port of Spain Port, was last seen leaving her home in Belmont on August 28, 2019.

Her aunt, who joined protest action in Mayaro sparked by the kidnapping and murder of Bharatt, a 23-year-old court clerk, heaped praise on the protective services and the public who joined forces to search for Bharatt.

Bharatt was kidnapped when she boarded what she believed to be a taxi at King Street, Arima on January 29 and her decomposing body was found off a precipice on February 4, at the Heights of Aripo. One man has been charged for Bharatt’s murder and his companion was charged with being in possession of items belonging to the murder victim. Two other suspects died in police custody and investigations are ongoing into their deaths.

Cooper described Bharatt as an “innocent soul” and expressed condolences to her relatives.

“I am so proud the father could get closure for his daughter. I realise it is easier to accept death than to accept uncertainty. For our family, it is a continued suffering that seemingly has no end, a year and five months later,” said Cooper, who lives in Guayaguayare.

“We are distraught, worried, fed-up, and angry,” she said.

Cooper and other relatives joined with the people in Mayaro for a candlelight vigil and interfaith service to call for an end to violence against women last week, but they hope their case can get some attention so that the family can get closure on Shanice’s disappearance.

“What we are experiencing is a juggling of information from the Homicide Bureau and the Anti Kidnapping Unit. One minute it is a homicide department issue, the next is a kidnapping issue. There are so many questions that we want answers for. Information is not forthcoming,” Cooper told Newsday by phone.

“I have never stopped sharing her stories on my Facebook page with the hope someone will say something. To date, not one person responded to my cries, which I find is alarming.”

From what a neighbour told the family, on the morning Shanice disappeared, she told someone on the phone that she would meet them by “the gas station.”

“We are certain that whoever she spoke to on the phone that morning, was someone she knew and was comfortable being with.”

The first week she went missing, Cooper said relatives searched the Belmont area. People who know her were able to account for her routine but claimed not to have seen or heard from her the day she disappeared.

“How is it possible that only on August 28, 2019, none of the regulars saw her? They knew her regular movements, the taxi she took. I know that morning (she went missing) would have been no different. She believed in accountability,” Cooper said.

In 2019, police investigators had held a male suspect, but later released him.

Contacted for comment, police investigating the case said they have no new leads on the case.