Father still seeking answers over daughter’s mysterious disappearance

Five years have passed since the disappearance of Monifer Stephen of Spring Village, and her father, Marsden Ashton, is still seeking closure.{{more}}

The mother of two was last seen on the night of March 8, 2008, after leaving home with a bowl to return to a cookout that she was attending.

In keeping with a tradition he has established, Ashton visited SEARCHLIGHT last week, to once again bring his daughter’s disappearance to the forefront, in the hope that he will find answers relating to why she is missing.

Ashton told SEARCHLIGHT that he believes that his daughter was killed and that the man responsible for her death is walking the streets, a free man.

The grieving father also expressed his unhappiness with the lack of progress that has been made since Stephen’s disappearance.

“I went to Human Rights. Human Rights told me that seven years have to pass before I can say my daughter is dead,” Ashton said. “I ask him: ‘When seven years pass, what will be the other alternative?’.”

Ashton also claimed a police officer said that he had seen Stephen in Kingstown, but did not take her to the central police station. Ashton explained that that statement by the police officer led to an announcement being made that his daughter was no longer missing, yet up to press time, he has not seen her.

“Where somebody go be, leave their two little girl child since the 8th of March, 2008? What kind of mother they go be?” Ashton asked.

The father believes that two individuals are responsible for the death of his daughter: however, he is unable to get justice because one of them has migrated to England.

He opined that the accomplice would have been his way to justice, because the young man may have been willing to talk about what had happened, but instead he fled the country for fear of what would happen to him.

Ashton told SEARCHLIGHT that he would like to have the matter revived because it is very important.

“I would like to get the matter refreshed,” he repeated several times.

Ronice and Kellis, Stephen’s daughters, attend primary school and are nine and seven years old respectively.

Their grandfather described them as “pretty like gold” and expressed his love for them, especially because their mother was his only daughter of three children.

This year, Stephen would have been celebrating her 28th birthday.(BK)