Mother fears the worse for missing mentally-impaired daughter

Jun 06, 2017 News

---

One week ago, Joan DaSilva, sent her daughter, Lisa Powers, to buy a $220 Digicel phone

card at a shop a short distance away from their Industry, East Coast Demerara home. This would however be the day that the woman’s daughter would go missing.
Although her daughter is 29 years old, DaSilva said that she is particularly concerned because she is mentally impaired. “Sometimes she remembers but other times she just forgets things and so she never travels alone. This has been happening since she was small and so she is home all the time with me; everywhere I go I does take her with me,” said DaSilva as her eyes welled up with tears.
But according to DaSilva, the trip to the shop was not an unusual task for her daughter since she had done so successfully on a number of occasions. The shop, she noted, is located at Bus Shed Street, Industry. The woman said that she began to worry about her daughter’s whereabouts after half an hour had elapsed and her daughter had not returned.
“She left around 9 o clock and when I see the time going I started asking ‘is where Lisa gone so long?’ I couldn’t call her or anything because she left her phone home,” DaSilva related yesterday.
The concerned mother decided to go find her daughter. DaSilva, however, found that the shop her daughter was sent to was closed. She was informed that her daughter decided to walk a short distance to another shop where she was able to purchase the phone card.
But even after walking to the other shop DaSilva still wasn’t able to locate her daughter. She started an intense search for her daughter, asking everyone she met if they had seen her daughter. It wasn’t long before a resident told her that “I just see Lisa jump in a bus…I started questioning how Lisa could gone in a bus and she ain’t got money? And on top of that she don’t travel by herself…”
DaSilva returned home to have a change of clothes and in the company of a relative headed to

Georgetown to continue the search for Lisa. At the Plaisance bus park, DaSilva asked if anyone had seen her daughter and sure enough several persons saw her heading down Avenue of the Republic. “Everywhere you see me you would see she…so people know me and she together, so the minute I ask people if they see my daughter they know who I talking about,” related DaSilva.
Several flyers were printed and distributed throughout central Georgetown and a number of other persons joined the search for Lisa but she was nowhere to be found on Monday. The search continued on Tuesday and Wednesday, too, when DaSilva would get what she believed would be a viable lead to her daughter’s whereabouts.
The woman said when a taxi driver saw her daughter’s photograph he recalled that a woman had paid him to take her missing daughter to Berbice. According to the taxi driver, the woman had asked that he drop her off at Pitt Street, New Amsterdam, which he did.
As such DaSilva headed to Berbice to continue the search. “We went to Berbice Wednesday and Thursday looking for Lisa and some people saw her at Canje Park,” disclosed DaSilva who decided to make a report about her daughter’s disappearance at the New Amsterdam Police Station.
But on Friday, DaSilva said that she started to receive a call from an unknown number. On the other side of the line was the voice of a male informing her that he was aware of her daughter’s location. The caller, who claimed he was a businessman who plies his trade in the interior, told DaSilva that he had gotten her number from a flyer that was distributed with her missing daughter.
According to DaSilva the caller anxiously called and said “they had the crossing here at Kwakwani and if y’all want to get her, she is with a policeman.”
DaSilva said that she has not been able to corroborate this information with any police station but was given reason to believe that her daughter might have been taken into the interior. “Some of the taxi drivers [in Berbice] claimed that they saw her and were going to take her to the station but a man dressed as policeman came up and said ‘no no no I’m taking her to Georgetown; I going to take her to her relatives’,” related DaSilva. According to DaSilva when one of the taxi drivers realised that the search for Lisa was still on going the following day he asked with evident concern “Wait the girl ain’t meet home yet?”
The woman said that she got subsequent calls from the unknown number with the individual claiming that he saw the police rank purchasing clothes for her daughter. “I begged that person if they are seeing my daughter if they can’t just go to the nearest police station and make a report but the person keep say no police does cover up for police and he can’t do that,” said a sobbing DaSilva.
Anyone with information about the whereabouts of Lisa Powers can contact her mother on telephone number 683-1641 or the nearest police station.

---

---