Trinidad: Diplomat’s driver found dead in SUV

A wrecker removes the Toyota Fortuner belonging to the Embassy of El Salvador from the area off Warren Road, Cunupia, after the body of Jose Tito Rivas was found in its trunk yesterday.ABRAHAM DIAZ/GUARDIAN
A wrecker removes the Toyota Fortuner belonging to the Embassy of El Salvador from the area off Warren Road, Cunupia, after the body of Jose Tito Rivas was found in its trunk yesterday.ABRAHAM DIAZ/GUARDIAN

(TRINIDAD GUARDIAN) The body of a work­er em­ployed at the Em­bassy of El Sal­vador was yes­ter­day found in an agri­cul­tur­al area in Cunu­pia.

The em­ploy­ee was iden­ti­fied as Jose Tito Ri­vas, 53. He was the of­fi­cial dri­ver of El Sal­vador Am­bas­sador Ray­mun­do Ernesto Ro­driquez Di­az.

Ac­cord­ing to a po­lice re­port, short­ly be­fore mid­day of­fi­cers of the Cunu­pia Po­lice Sta­tion, act­ing up­on in­for­ma­tion re­ceived, went to an area off War­ren Road where they found a blue Toy­ota For­tuner, li­censed PCM 321.

A par­ty of po­lice of­fi­cers from the Cen­tral Di­vi­sion, who re­port­ed on the scene short­ly there­after, car­ried out fur­ther checks where they found the body wrapped in a sheet in the trunk of the ve­hi­cle.

The body was lat­er pos­i­tive­ly iden­ti­fied as that of Ri­vas.

The T&T Guardian was told by in­ves­ti­ga­tors that Ri­vas was last seen leav­ing the Queen’s Hall com­pound in Port-of-Spain at about 9 pm on Thurs­day evening.

Ri­vas had re­port­ed­ly took the Am­bas­sador to a diplo­mat­ic event—Brazil­ian Na­tion­al Day cel­e­bra­tions host­ed by the Em­bassy of Brazil—as his fi­nal tour of du­ty that day.

Ri­vas was even­tu­al­ly re­port­ed miss­ing by his wife when he failed to re­turn to his home in Val­sayn lat­er that night.

A diplo­mat at an­oth­er em­bassy, who wished not to be iden­ti­fied, ex­pressed sad­ness and con­cern at the in­ci­dent. He al­so ex­tend­ed con­do­lences to of­fi­cials at the El Sal­vador Em­bassy.

In­ves­ti­ga­tions are con­tin­u­ing.