A multi-agency search operation for a missing two-year-old, Angelo Tobias Plaza, in Tobago has been boosted by the arrival of the specialized Hunters Search and Rescue Team (HSRT), a volunteer group with extensive experience in land and coastal search missions.
HSRT members made their way to the coastal island after the toddler’s reported disappearance on Monday night, touching down in Tobago shortly after dark on Wednesday. Before launching their on-the-ground operations, the team held an early morning strategy session Thursday with leadership from the Tobago Emergency Management Agency (TEMA), including TEMA director Allan Stewart, to align on search parameters and review existing case details.
HSRT leader Vallence Rambharat told local media outlet Express on Thursday that the team’s core mission throughout the search is to deliver long-awaited closure to Angelo’s grieving family, regardless of the outcome.
“We stay always above the noise. Our strength really is in field searching, we are good with marine searches along the coastline as well, and we stick to that, we don’t hear any noise circulating around us,” Rambharat said, emphasizing the team’s focused, data-driven approach to the operation.
On Thursday, HSRT members conducted thorough line searches of the Goodwood Bay coastline and the wooded and residential areas surrounding Angelo’s home in the small coastal village of Goodwood. Drawing on the team’s two decades of search experience and proprietary analytical framework, Rambharat explained that the team has calculated a high probability of locating Angelo’s remains in the near vicinity of the bay.
Rambharat pushed back on widespread misinformation circulating locally that the distance from Angelo’s home to the beach stretched 3,000 meters, a distance too far for a toddler to travel unaided. To test the claim, the team conducted a field test: recreating a toddler’s slow, unsteady pace over the route, the team clocked the 200-foot journey at just one minute and ten seconds, confirming that a young child could easily make the trip unobserved.
“Therefore, the possibility of a toddler walking to the beach in this instance is also possible, highly probable, and therefore we working these two analytics that we have done for the morning and we are doing some beach patrols, we are studying the ocean currents,” Rambharat added.
The search effort has grown steadily since Angelo was first reported missing on Monday night, with land, sea, and aerial missions already conducted by local emergency responders. On Wednesday, Trinidad and Tobago Defence Force personnel joined Trinidad and Tobago Police Service officers to expand land search operations across the area. On Thursday, Assistant Commissioner of Police (Tobago) Rishi Singh traveled to the search site to meet with Angelo’s mother, other extended family members, and local villagers, reaffirming law enforcement’s commitment to exhausting all resources to resolve the case.
A senior anonymous police officer told the Express that when search operations were paused for the evening Wednesday, responders received an emergency tip from a resident of Mount St. George claiming a child’s body had been spotted floating in Goodwood Bay. Search teams immediately responded to the area and conducted an extensive sweep of the bay and surrounding coastline, but no remains were recovered. The officer confirmed that the tip is still considered credible, with the witness standing by their account that a body was seen before being carried away by shifting currents.
Angelo’s stepfather, Shannon Miller, who joined search operations as a volunteer diver on Tuesday, says he remains optimistic that the toddler will be found safe, despite the growing passage of time since his disappearance.