Last rites for Danette Pierre after 3 months

ALMOST three months after Danette Pierre’s skeletal remains were found in a burnt car at Claxton Bay on January 28, she will finally be laid to rest next Monday.

Her mother, Donna Pierre, told the Newsday on Wednesday, “At long last, a funeral service will be held at the Church of the Nativity, Crystal Stream, Diego Martin, on April 24, starting at 11 am.”

After the service, the body will be interred at the Lapeyrouse Cemetery, Port of Spain.

Donna explained that after waiting for several weeks to get a plot at the Roodal Cemetery, San Fernando, to bury her daughter, she was granted access, but would have had to sign a waiver which meant other people could be buried there.

“I thought we would have been able to get a spot, for the sake of her children, where we could have erected a tombstone and they could go and place flowers or candles on the site.

“I could not go through that amount...They broke my heart. I said enough is enough, and decided to bury her in Port of Spain.”

She explained that her family is originally from Diego Martin, but she moved to San Fernando 30 years ago. She said her family also had plots at Lapeyrouse, where her parents and other family members were buried.

“I just want this chapter to finish by Monday and then see how to start picking up the pieces.”

She said the youngest of her daughter’s three children, a two-year-old baby boy, had been left in her care. She now has to see about getting help through the Social Development Ministry to care for him, as neither she nor her husband are employed.

“He has no one else. His mom is dead and his father has not been around since he was six months old. My other two grandchildren, a 13-year-old girl and a seven-year-old boy, are with their father’s family.”

She said the two had returned to school and were receiving counselling from the Police Victims Support Division.

Pierre’s remains were found in Claxton Bay, the night she disappeared, January 28, but were not immediately identified. An autopsy failed to determine the gender of the remains, but concluded the victim had been burnt alive.

Pieces of jewellery found in the car were identified as belonging to Pierre, and DNA samples taken from her parents Dave and Donna on February 5 were a perfect match to the remains.

Pierre left the family’s home at Hibiscus Drive, Petite Morne Settlement, Ste Madeleine, around 8.30 pm on January 28, after receiving a telephone call.

Dressed very casually, Pierre told her mother, in whose care she left her three children, that she was “making a turn” and would be back soon.

She never returned. Calls to her phone went unanswered. A report was made to the Ste Madeleine Police station the next morning.

Using her cellphone records, several persons of interest have been questioned, but no arrests have been made.

Donna said the police told her the investigation was still active, as cellphones seized from persons of interest were analysed by the police Cybercrime Unit.

For what would have been Pierre's 32nd birthday on March 9, her childhood friends put up a shrine at the site where her body was found.