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For two days, fishermen, soldiers and volunteers scoured the waters off Eccles Road East, hoping to find 17-year-old Gabriel Nelson—a St Stephen’s College student who over the weekend vanished while swimming with his family along the east coast.

By the time Nelson’s body was eventually pulled from the waters near Grand Lagoon in Mayaro last Tuesday, a familiar grief had already rippled far beyond his family, into a community that has for years been calling for better resources and education on the powerful currents that often grip the waters within and around Trinidad’s east coast.

DROWNED: Shivanie Ramkarran