KINGSTWON, St Vincent (AP) — Hundreds of mourners from across St Vincent and the Grenadines turned out for the funeral of a 12 year-old girl found hanging from a tree after she had been raped.

Among those at Thursday’s service for Lakisha Nanton were legislators and education officials. The steel band the girl had played with led the procession of mourners through the capital, after which Nanton was buried at Kingstown cemetery.

Nanton’s body was found just after dawn on July 2 in the village of Sion Hill, less than a mile (two kilometres) from where she lived. She would have celebrated her 13th birthday in August.

Witnesses said Nanton was hanging by a cloth tied around her neck and was in a kneeling position with her knees touching the ground.

The body had multiple bruises to the face, police said. An autopsy confirmed she had been raped.

Nanton, who was in her first year at the Emmanuel High School, was last seen leaving a practice session of the Sion Hill Euphonium Steel Orchestra the evening of July 1.

Police have detained and released at least two people after questioning. Police say they have several people helping in the investigation, but so far have no suspects.

In a separate case, police said they had identified the badly burnt remains of a body found Wednesday with two charred tyres around its neck as butcher Linton John.

John, in his late 50s and the brother of former attorney-general Arthur Williams, had been cut several times across the body with a machete-like weapon before his body was set on fire and left in the back of a pickup truck in Argyle, about 12 miles (19 kilometres) outside the capital, police and family members said Thursday.

John is the 12th person murdered in 2002 in this Caribbean island of 116,000 people.