Forensic investigation concludes into Coolie Town deaths

[dropcap]T[/dropcap]he bodies of all the victims in the Coolie Town incident have finally been released to their families, now that the forensic investigation has ended.

Director of Forensic Science Services at the Forensic Lab, Fernanda Henry, revealed that the forensic investigation into the four suspicious deaths in Coolie Town has finally concluded.

In March, the Ministry of Health stated that the four persons who died, plus ten other persons from the Coolie Town area who presented at the Victoria Hospital, may have ingested a toxic substance resembling strong rum.

At a joint meeting with officials from the Royal Saint Lucia Police Force, the Ministry of Health and from Pathology, the Director of Forensic Science Services indicated the importance of determining the source and to understand what happened to the people who died, as well as those living.

“We brought everyone together today so that we could have some sort of closure from the forensic perspective. The investigation still continues so that the Ministry of Health, as well, can have some direction on how to treat patients if there are any outstanding or long-standing effects to the exposure. And so we updated everyone with respect to where we are on this particular issue and we wanted to let the public know, since we had issued something initially.”

She added that all four bodies have been released to the affected families now that the forensic investigation has concluded.

“From the pathologist end, we have since released the bodies because we kept them until the forensic results were available. So we have now released the bodies so the families can have closure in that respect but the criminal investigation, or the investigation, continues so we can determine a source and really have a good understanding of what happened and try to prevent it from happening again.”

She thanked the family members for their outstanding co-operation and patience from the beginning in March of this year up to the present: “From the initial meeting that we had with all of the agencies and we invited them, they came in willingly and they’ve been co-operative ever since. And we want to sincerely thank them. We understand that it was a very difficult time and they were not able to have proper burials for their loved ones until we were able to get a conclusion on the analyses.  So we really want to thank them sincerely for being co-operative, for following up; they were very diligent with following up on the progress of the investigation. So we really want to express our thanks to them for that and we want to encourage Saint Lucians to follow suit.”

The Royal Saint Lucia Police Force and the Ministry of Health reserved comment until the criminal investigation has concluded.