ANANDA Dean’s family had high hopes, after making arrangements to pay a ransom as well as sending $7,000 worth of phone credit to persons who claimed to be the abductors of the 11-year-old girl, that she would be happily reunited with them.

However, yesterday, although they could not identify the severely decomposed body as that of ‘their little angel’, the reality hit that they may never see her smile again.

Yesterday, the residents of Whitehall Avenue in Kingston, where Ananda lived part-time with her father and his family, rushed to the community of Belvedere in rural St Andrew, when news spread that her body had been found.

When her parents could not make a positive identification, their hopes slowly began to return as they milled around on the streets with sad blank stares.

Dozens of children huddled together waiting for some good news, especially since they had been told earlier that her parents heard her last Friday screaming in the background as they spoke to persons claiming to be her abductors.

An aunt of Ananda, who requested anonymity, told the Observer that the family was so sure she would have been returned to them, since they always complied with the supposed abductors’ requests.

She said they had become even more hopeful after one of the men who claimed to have abducted her, called and they heard Ananda in the background screaming in anguish for “Daddy, Daddy”.

Yesterday, the family said if it was Ananda that was found, then it can only be surmised that it must have been a recorded message which the ‘killers’ were playing.

“I know is she we hear screaming for Daddy Daddy like them doing something to her,” she said.

The aunt said she had made several trips to various points, as asked by persons claiming to be the abductors, as well as following up leads, many of which turned out to be pranksters.

She said she believed that the persons they sent the phone credit to were the ones involved, as they said things which seemed to suggest that they had more information than they were letting on.

“Every time them call they keep saying them going to meck har come home,” said the distraught woman.

The aunt said although the persons called from a private number all the time, one night they heard crickets chirping in the background which suggestewd the call was coming from a rural area.

She said on one occasion they were asked to pay a ransom of $30,000, however, they could hear someone in the background chastising the caller for making such a small demand. He then hung up and called back requesting half-million dollars.

The aunt said that she was instructed to meet with the ‘abductors’ at Emancipation Park in Kingston. However, when they turned up they were redirected to Parkington Plaza, also in Kingston, but Ananda was not there as promised.

She said they never involved the police as they were warned against doing so.

Apart from this, she said they received several other calls during the 11 days that Ananda was missing, however most of them appeared to have been pranks.

“One day a lady call and a cry on the phone say she see her in a car with two men in a Mocho, Clarendon and that a gunshot just fired in the car. She sounded sincere because she call from her number and everything,” she told the Observer.

But when they went to the area they found out it was another prank call.

The nightmare continued when another man called to say that they had raped her and thrown her body in the May Pen Cemetery, located on Spanish Town Road.

Even yesterday relatives of the little girl said a woman from

Montego Bay visited Whitehall Avenue, wearing T-shirts and buttons with Ananda’s photos, saying that Ananda was dead, even before the body was discovered yesterday. The woman was held by the police for questioning.

But even though the relatives of Ananda Dean said they had kept the police out of the ‘negotiations’, they threw blame at the law officers, claiming that nothing had been done since she went missing.

“If we didn’t go and block the road we wouldn’t get anywhere because the police not giving us any information,” said one relative.

While residents held discussions about the missing girl, a group of children sat on the cold concrete of a sidewalk in Whitehall Avenue as they awaited news as to whether the badly decomposed body found earlier in the day was that of Ananda.