Tricia Williams, 41, just wants one thing for Christmas. To have her missing son come back to her alive and well.
When most people were celebrating Divali, the festival of lights, on October 29, the mother of two was in the darkness of uncertainty whether her first-born son, Maurice, who has been missing since September 16, is still living or not.
“On All Saints’ and All Souls’ Day, how am I supposed to feel when everyone was lighting a candle for their loved ones?” Williams asked.
“Lighting a candle was saying Maurice is dead, so I didn’t. When people and family members go missing and never return it’s harder to live with than people that die and bury.
“It’s only wicked people will do something like that, make a mother, father, husband, wife, and children go through that pain every single day.”
With tears welling up in her eyes, Williams said, “He would always hug and kiss me when I go to visit him at his place. His sneakers, slippers, and clothes are by me which constantly remind me of him. For Christmas Maurice would normally come by me in Arima and spend the day with me. I want him back now.”
Williams said she had family members who had passed, she felt the pain, sorrow and cried for them. The anguished woman said, however, when a mother had a child that was part of her, she would always have pain in her belly.
Maurice Williams, 23, was last seen on September 16. He left his home at Mendez Drive in Champs Fleurs, around 11 pm to collect the day’s sales at his car wash in Crystal Drive, Morvant, using his friend’s Toyota Axio car which was later found in Freeport.
When he left the house he was seen wearing a white vest and blue jeans and had a large gold chain around his neck.
Maurice made a phone call to collect a sum of money at another business place but he never arrived there. Calls to his cell phone went unanswered. Worried relatives made reports about his disappearance to the Morvant and St Joseph police stations.
Williams said she was crestfallen when a man’s body was found in Freeport on September 29 and her relatives feared that it was her son.
They were relieved to discover that the body at the Forensic Science Centre, St James, was not Maurice’s.
CCTV footage of car
Maurice was driving
Speaking to the Sunday Guardian at its St Vincent Street, Port-of-Spain, offices on Wednesday, Williams said she called the T&T Police Anti-Kidnapping Unit (AKU) on September 24 and an officer informed her that there was CCTV camera footage from the Morvant Junction showing the car Maurice was driving at 2 am.
She said the car’s glass was heavily tinted; the police had sent the footage to “clean up” but they have not gotten it back as yet. Williams said that would help a lot but she did not know if the police could do that.
The distraught mother said she was told by the police that they had a backlog of other footage and cases of missing people.
Williams said there was the perception that only Ria Sookdeo was being highlighted.
She said while all life was sacred, there were other missing people too; her son was missing before Sookdeo but nobody knows about Maurice.
Williams said the car Maurice was driving was found in a remote agricultural area in Freeport days later and it was scrapped. A farmer had made a report to the Freeport police but no one came right away.
She said people did not know that her son took out a loan for his car which was parked by her because it needed repairs and still had four years of car payments to make.
Williams said the car wash business was passed on to Maurice and his younger brother by their father.
‘He worked in a rough area’
She said her son’s cellphone was switched off since September 17 and there were no leads or calls demanding a ransom.
With the pain and agony showing in her face and voice, Williams said with the support of friends and relatives they distributed flyers in the Chaguanas area and searched for her missing son from Chickland, Freeport, Carlsen Field to Claxton Bay, but to no avail.
When asked if Maurice had any rivals or enemies, if he hung out with the wrong crowd, gambled or had any debts she said he did not even have any misdemeanours, but it was a “rough” area where he worked.
She said she did not know what was the situation, if he had a falling out or problem with anyone or what caused him to go missing, but it was very hard for her that with each passing day she did not know where he was or what he was doing.
Grief stricken, she said she tried not to think what could be going on with him or what he was facing.
Williams said since her son’s disappearance she could not sleep properly. She tried to eat a little bit to keep her strength up because if she gets sick she would be of no use in finding him, but the ordeal was taking a toll on her.
The tears began to flow freely as Williams made an impassioned plea: “I still believe that Maurice is still alive in my heart. I just want whoever kidnapped him to feel sorry for him, set him free and let him come back to me.”
Williams said an AKU officer had recommended that she speak to a counsellor or join a support group, but she has not yet done so because she wanted to focus more on searching for her son.
Williams said she has not gone back to her nursing job since she received the news of Maurice’s disappearance.
She said she would need to talk to somebody eventually or else she “might go mad.”
When the Sunday Guardian contacted the Anti-Kidnapping Unit on Thursday, an officer said there were no senior officers present to talk, while an inspector said to call back as they were in a meeting. Ellen Lewis, corporate communications officer of the Police Service, said there was no major headway in the investigations.
MORE INFO
Anyone with information on the whereabouts of Maurice Williams can contact any police station, TTPS Anti-Kidnapping Unit at 623-6793, 555, 999, or relatives at 367-0573, 310-1332 or 625-6351.