Dead fishermen were from Dominican Republic

(CNS): Police have identified the bodies of two men found last summer in a fishing boat drifting off the coast of Little Cayman, though the cause of death could not been determined. Eduard Eugenio Taveras Toribio (37) and Manuel Henriquez (58) were discovered by officers from the RCIPS Joint Marine Unit in August. They were both from the Dominican Republic but were living and working in Jamaica as fishermen and had gone out on a fishing trip. 

“It is likely that they had engine failure and their boat drifted until the police vessel came across it,” police said Monday. “A post mortem was performed on both bodies. Due to the condition of the bodies, the cause of death for each man could not be determined. However, the post mortems did determine that there were no signs of violence.”

Identification was establish through DNA. Over the last six months RCIPS officers made extensive efforts to identify the men and get to the bottom of the mysterious discovery, which included travel to Jamaica and the Dominican Republic, and a lengthy search for possible family members.

Kent Harman of Genetic Technologies,  Inc. a St. Louis, Missouri based Forensic DNA Laboratory worked with the Caymanian Forensic Science Laboratory staff in performing the complex kinship calculations confirming the identities of the deceased using DNA profiles of several distant relatives.  Kent Harman implemented a robust kinship calculation tool known as Brutus confirming the men’s identities.