One day after her mother begged a 14-year-old girl to return home to attend her father's funeral, police found the teenager near a shopping mall in Chaguanas.
The girl was accompanied by a 25-year-old man.
Her mother, Rehana SIngh, who made the plea for the girl to return while speaking to reporters yesterday, told the Guardian she was happy and that it was the first good news she had heard in days.
The past week for the mother has been a traumatic one, first with the disappearance of her daughter, closely followed by the murder of her husband, Vishnu Persad.
Persad was shot dead at the family’s home at Mahabalsingh Trace, Navet Village, Rio Claro, on Saturday.
The 39-year-old mother of three said her daughter, a student of the Rio Claro East Secondary School, went missing after leaving home to go to school last Wednesday. She has two other daughters aged 11 and nine.
Singh said that after the teenager did not return home, she and her husband went in search of her in Mayaro after they got information that she left school in the company of a 25-year-old man, who had worked with her father in the past.
Shortly after she disappeared, Shivani’s profile name on social media site Facebook was changed to match the man’s surname and a photograph of the two embracing was posted.
The mother said that the man had approached the family in the past seeking permission to begin a relationship with the teenager but they refused.
Singh said she and her husband reported the incident to the police, but decided to continue searching on their own after investigators had no success in locating the teen or the man by Friday night.
Singh said that 30 minutes after they returned home following an unsuccessful search at the home of the man’s parents on Saturday, her husband was murdered.