Help us find Nicole

Nicole Lezama’s parents told Newsday yesterday that they fear their daughter, a form three student of the San Fernando East Secondary School, may have been abducted.

Reports are that Lezama left her Picton Street home shortly after 11am to go to a cyber caf? a short distance away from where she lives. She had gone there to complete a school project she had been working on. When some hours had passed and she did not return home, her parents, Lydia Hinds and Neil Lezama, became worried and reported the matter to officers of the San Fernando Police Station.

Calls to the teenager’s cellular phone have since been directed to a voicemail.

Her disappearance comes two weeks after the body of 16 year-old schoolgirl Rachael Ramkissoon was discovered in a track along Balata Trace, San Raphael. She was still dressed in her North Eastern College school uniform. An autopsy revealed that she was strangled.

Police are also searching for 17-year-old Kimberly Ferdinand of Demerara, Wallerfield who was last seen on January 11 leaving her mother’s workplace at Agape Training Centre, Pro Queen Street, Arima.

Speaking to Newsday at the family’s home yesterday, Lezama’s mother was hoping that her daughter did not fall victim to some kind of crime.

“I know how things are happening in this country and people are just disappearing,” Hinds said. “Little girls leave their homes and never return.” A mother of four other children, Hinds wiped away tears as she spoke about Nicole, saying, “It really hurts as a mother to know your little girl is out there all alone and you are not there to protect her. My daughter is not the type of person to run away from home.” Hinds said that she and her husband are very protective of all their children and her husband makes it a habit to drop off and pick them up from school.

Nicole, the mother said, was working on a school project and she needed to print some pictures from the internet. Wiping tears, Hinds said when Nicole did not return home, she went to the cyber caf?.

“I immediately called her cell phone but it went to voice mail. I called her friends and close relatives and no one has seen her. It is really hard. I am not doing good at all. These are incidents you read about on the newspapers. I did not know it would happen to us.” Describing Nicole as an obedient girl, Hinds said that it was customary for she and her husband to lecture to their children about the need to be careful, especially going into strange cars. “If Nicole enters a car, it has to be someone she knows. She would not just enter a strange car.” Saying that she would continue to pray for her daughter’s safe return home, Hinds pleaded, “I am begging whoever has my little girl, please let her come home to us. Her twin brothers need her. They are inseparable. Please don’t harm her.” Nicole was last seen wearing a pink and white sleeveless top, black jeans and grey sandals. Anyone with information about her whereabouts, can contact the San Fernando Police Station on 652-2564.