Trinidad Express
Missing Leah's cellphone found
...mom hopes for lead
Carolyn Kissoon South Bureau
The cellphone belonging to missing schoolgirl Leah Lammy has been found, her mother, Gail Lammy, said yesterday.
"We have hope that my daughter will be found. The police are working on the evidence (cellphone) and I know they will find something to lead them to her," she said.
The cellphone is the one answered by a man the day Leah went missing 19 days ago. The man asked for a $300,000 ransom. He told Leah's mother to call again at ten o' clock that night. That phone was never answered again.
Since Acting Police Commissioner James Philbert's announcement on Thursday that four men were held in connection with the disappearance of the eight-year-old girl, Leah's family have begun making preparations to welcome her home.
Her mother woke early yesterday morning and travelled to Port of Spain to meet the investigators.
"I am so happy with the breakthrough. This means that something is happening. The police said they have the four men and they found the cellphone. I can feel it in my heart that my daughter is alive and she will come back to me soon. I am so happy today," she said in a telephone interview yesterday.
At the family's Tom Street, Longdenville, home, gospel music was playing loudly yesterday.
A woman, who identified herself as the child's grandmother, said: "I don't want to be in the news, I was reading my Bible. We are praying for her release. Through God we will get our answers."
Philbert said on Thursday that four men were being questioned about the child's disappearance, but he had little information on the well-being of the girl, a pupil of the Edinburgh Government Primary School. Philbert said the child had been missing "for far too long".
Leah went missing on February 10 after she walked out of her school to travel home.
The commissioner himself led a door-to-door search in the Chaguanas area, and met with Leah's family. Lammy spent the Carnival weekend in a secluded location, praying for her daughter's release.
Top policemen have been appointed by Philbert to investigate the case.
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and while this one have the police officers busy, here's another one
No word yet on Sally...
Peter Christopher pchristopher@trinidadexpress.com
WHILE breakthroughs appear to have come concerning the case of eight-year-old Leah Lammy, the relatives of Sally Lobai still remain in limbo concerning her situation.
Lobai disappeared just one day after little Leah failed to return to her Longdenville, Chaguanas, home from school.
The 26-year old woman had gone to Longdenville for a job interview on February 11 before she went missing. Relatives said she called her boyfriend after leaving the interview, stating she had gotten into a car and was heading to Chaguanas.
She was asked to call him when she arrived in Chaguanas but that call never came, relatives said. Calls to her phone went unanswered, except for one later that afternoon. A male voice came through the phone then, demanding a ransom of $300,000 or else she would be shipped out of the country.
The family says there has been no contact since then.
"Still there has been nothing, we keep hearing nothing from anyone," her father, Francis Lobai, said yesterday.
Yesterday, members of the family were appealing for the public to look out for Lobai or to come forward with any information concerning the young woman's whereabouts.
Officers from the Anti-Kidnapping Squad said yesterday they were still conducting investigations.
