Head of the Presidential Secretariat, Dr. Roger Luncheon, said that Cabinet on Tuesday registered its outrage at the gruesome death of the 16- year-old former Queens College student Neesa Gopaul and said that it was clear that the system failed to protect her. Dr. Luncheon made this comment during his post-Cabinet press briefing at the Office of the President yesterday.
The young lady’s body was found in a suitcase in a trail on the Soesdyke Linden Highway. The body was tied with a length of rope to which a gym weight was attached, suspected to be used as a means of anchoring the body down. It is said that the girl had some months before her gruesome death complained about being abused by persons with whom she was familiar.
Dr. Luncheon called the killing a most dismal saga and said that Cabinet members and particularly President Bharrat Jagdeo expressed outrage at what ought to have been prevented and ought to have been “nipped in the bud.”
“It has been described as a systems failure; but I want to believe that this event, this [unnecessary] loss of life must be fully investigated. The operations in the system, particularly the collaboration, the efforts at integration that will have to be revised to ensure that those weaknesses those deficiencies that are identified would be corrected, and allow the system and the administration to give a solemn undertaking that it will do everything to ensure that incidents like this one never happen again,” the HPS said.