“I don’t know where you are, but I know that God has you safe in his arms.
“I miss you, I am always thinking of you.
“You will always be my child, mummy’s little girl.
“I love you, from mum.”
Susan Lalchan, 46, posted those poignant, bitter-sweet words in a video montage of her daughter in happier times on YouTube after she went missing.
She said when people looked at the video, especially mothers and daughters, it got them to stop fighting, started talking to one another, and brought them closer together.
A child’s birthday, Mother’s Day, and Christmas are joyous occasions to celebrate with loved ones for most people. For Lalchan, they have become dark days since her first-born daughter, Kellyann Seerattan, disappeared without a trace five years ago.
Speaking to the Sunday Guardian from her John Dial, Tobago, home on Wednesday, with sadness in her voice, Lalchan said “After five years my entire family and myself can’t get any closure. We want to know what happened to her.
“I miss her. I see her face all the time and everything I do reminds me of her presence.
“Mother’s Day...then October 11 is Kellyann’s birthday, it’s not a good day now, then in November 2011 she went missing, it’s not a good time.
“I’m a Christmas person and used to enjoy getting a present from her, now there’s an emptiness and aching inside of me. We always miss her. It’s really hard.”
Seerattan, 25, a former kindergarten teacher, was last seen at her Circular Road, Princes Town home by her child’s father, Kerwyn Nimchan, when he visited her to pick up their four-month-old daughter, Kelseigh, on November 3, 2011.
He was also the first one to notice her disappearance when he returned the following day to bring Kelseigh home.
Although Seerattan’s family home appeared to have been ransacked, her clothing, jewelry and passport had not been taken and she has not been seen or heard from since. The door was locked and there were no signs of a break-in.
Calls to her mobile phone had gone unanswered. Police reports from the Princes Town Police Station confirmed that neighbours had seen a black vehicle parked in front the house the following morning on November 4, 2011.
Lalchan said that to date, no one had called her with information about her daughter and no ransom calls were made.
She said all of Seerattan’s personal effects were left behind, the only thing missing was what she had on her like her purse with her ID card, a piece of jewelry, and earrings she wore that she gave her daughter.
Family and friends searched for Seerattan in the South and distributed flyers.
When asked if her daughter’s bank account was intact, she said she did not have any substantial amount of cash.
Lalchan said nobody called after five years to say Seerattan owed them any money, she had no debts and was not involved in any activities such as gambling.
She said the family members were Pentecostal and her daughter attended the Princes Town Open Bible Church.
The grief-stricken mother said they sold the family home in Princes Town because of the painful memories and she had tried to move on.
Struggling to keep her composure, her voice breaking, Lalchan said Seerattan’s brother Christopher died when he was 11 years old due to a heart defect in 1998, she was 12 at the time and had been her rock and comfort since.
Lalchan made a heartfelt appeal if anyone had information about Seerattan to go to the nearest police station, it might not be somebody in Princes Town or South, but might be from someone in Sangre Grande or another part of Trinidad.
She said she did not want to give out her cell phone number because it was a disaster the last time around with mean-spirited and cruel people calling her telling her that Seerattan was dead, extortionists demanding money, prank callers and hoaxers sending the family on wild goose chases looking for her daughter, to one caller claiming he had information but wanted a $500 phone card, many of which she did not report to the police.
On the perception that the police were primarily focusing their attention on missing hairdresser Ria Sookdeo, Lalchan said this was not so, her case was recent and current and the police were doing their job.
She said Sookdeo was a human being and she wanted the police to find her also.
Lalchan suggested that police officers can be assigned to deal with so-called cold cases going back five years like her daughter’s and beyond while continuing searching for people who have gone missing just recently.
She said she was not giving up and held out hope that Seerattan could come back to her tomorrow or for Christmas which will be nice.
Kelseigh, Seerattan’s daughter, who is now five years old, went to live with her father at his home at Cocoyea Village, San Fernando, when her mother went missing.
Kelseigh has since migrated to the US with her father.
•Anyone with information about the whereabouts of Kellyann Seerattan can contact any police station, the Princes Town Police Station at 655–2231 or TTPS Anti-Kidnapping Unit at 623-6793.