PORT OF SPAIN (NYT) — Chad Joseph, a 26-year-old from Trinidad and Tobago who had been living in Venezuela in recent months, told his family he would soon be taking a short boat ride back home.
He has yet to return, and now his family fears the worst.
On Thursday, his name spread across social media, with users saying that he was one of six people aboard a suspected drug vessel that had been blown up by the U.S. military this week.
“I don’t want to believe that this is my child,” his mother, Lenore Burnley, said in an interview. “Is this really true?”
The U.S. military has destroyed five boats it has alleged were ferrying drugs into the United States, killing 27 people. And despite the mounting death toll, no authority has come forward to publicly release the names of any of the dead.
Relatives have been left with rumors and social media posts — as well as their loved ones’ absences — to reach their own conclusions.
Mr. Joseph’s family is believed to be the first to publicly say they believe a relative is among those killed on one of the targeted boats. Mr. Joseph’s neighbor, known by his last name Samaroo, was on the same boat and is also missing, Mr. Joseph’s aunt, Lynette Burnley said.
Wayne Sturge, Trinidad and Tobago’s defense minister, said he had not received official confirmation that any of those on the boat were from Trinidad. The strike took place in international waters, so the government of Trinidad and Tobago has no jurisdiction to investigate, he said.
The first attack, which killed 11 people, was announced by the Trump administration on Sept. 2. Family and friends took to social media to lament the deaths of eight people from the Venezuelan town of San Juan de Unare they said had died in the strike. Nobody included surnames.
They were quickly quashed: Venezuelan security officials descended on San Juan de Unare, cut off the electricity and made clear that public pronouncements about the attacks were not welcome, according to four townspeople, including the niece of one of the victims. Posts were deleted.
The wife of one of the people, who lived in Güiria, a town also on the Venezuelan coast, told The New York Times on the condition that her name not be published that her husband, a fisherman, had gone to work one day and had never returned.
The Venezuelan government appears to have cracked down on publicity about the attack, experts said, because officials were anxious not to antagonize the United States in the face of a military buildup in the Caribbean that appears to be meant to ratchet up pressure on Venezuela’s authoritarian leader, President Nicolás Maduro.
In an interview in Caracas last month, Venezuela’s vice president, Delcy Rodríguez, claimed that her government knew nothing about the identities of the people who had died in recent boat attacks. Venezuela has deployed security and intelligence forces across the coast in recent weeks.
“So far, not even their nationality is known,” she said.
President Gustavo Petro of Colombia announced last week that signs indicated that Colombians had been killed in one of the more recent boat attacks, but did not say if the government had learned the identities of any of the victims.
Mr. Joseph lived in Las Cuevas, a fishing village on the northern coast of Trinidad, an hour by land to the capital, Port of Spain, and an hour’s boat ride to Venezuela. His family said he had worked as a fisherman and frequently made trips to Venezuela.
But the northern coast is not just for fishing: Drug traffickers and fishermen also use it to transport illicit goods, experts said.
Mr. Joseph’s family denied that he had been a trafficker.
President Trump announced the strike on Tuesday, saying that the military had killed six men and asserting — without providing evidence — that they had been smuggling drugs.
At least two of the boats the U.S. military destroyed were near Trinidad, a known transshipment point for Colombian cocaine that passes through Venezuela.
A broad range of specialists in laws governing the use of force have called the strikes illegal, because the military is not supposed to deliberately target civilians — even criminal suspects. Traditionally, the U.S. Coast Guard, sometimes with assistance from the Navy, has interdicted and boarded boats suspected of drug smuggling, and arrested crews if illicit cargo was found.
Burnley, Joseph’s mother, said she was convinced that her son was among the dead, because he had not been in touch despite the widespread social media posts about him.
The law of the sea, she said, calls for the authorities to stop and intercept a boat, “not just blow it up.’’
By FRANCES ROBLES/New York Times
Charlie Savage contributed reporting from Washington and Julie Turkewitz from Bogotá, Colombia.
Frances Robles is a Times reporter covering Latin America and the Caribbean. She has reported on the region for more than 25 years.
