Jose Luis Espat Weighs in on Anny Young’s DNA Evidence

Jose Luis Espat

Late this evening, the Young family, along with Jose Luis Espat, who has been working closely with them since Anisha’s disappearance last year, called a press brief to provide an update on latest developments regarding the case.  While they are no closer to locating Young, the family is upset that another piece of evidence has been sent abroad for DNA testing without their approval.

Jose Luis Espat

“We agreed to have a meeting, a phone press meeting with Mr. Chester Williams to get the necessary permissions to go ahead and get that sample to send it for a private DNA testing to see what results would come out from that and to see if it would either match or whatever results.  At that meeting, we told Mr. Williams that we would be satisfied with whatever the results would be, but it had to be from that accredited source.  So we had that meeting.  Mr. Jermaine Gumby Tillett was with us at that meeting.  He was present there and heard all conversations and at that meeting we came to terms that Mr. Williams had given the go ahead and we called after Mr. Williams and myself spoke to the doctor in charge of the DNA lab in LA.  We contacted Mr. Gian Cho who is the director of the National Forensic Services and we had a three-way conversation as well.  In that three-way conversation it was established that it‘s not a normal protocol to allow citizens to do a private test but that it would be done in this case so we establish that all parties would agree to have it done, but the only issue would be which was the concern of the doctor that‘s the director of the lab in LA, is that if we‘re going to go through all this trouble to do the DNA test, we would need to be admissible in a court of law in Belize.  So we were trying to reach to the best way forward on how to carry that out.  Everything was prepared for myself and Ms. Sheree to take the samples and everything to LA, but we said that we would have a further meeting with the Director of the Belize National Forensic Services to move forward and see how best we could fit that in under the law so that we could admit it to court.  And we also made it clear that the priority for the Young family was, even if it cannot be admitted to court, they wanted this to be tested at the lab in LA for their piece of mind and because they had confidence in that lab, seeing that Ms. Maureen was friends with the doctor that’s the director.”