Angelica was a beautiful angel and ‘A’ student, says principal

RAD­HI­CA DE SIL­VA

Se­nior Mul­ti­me­dia Re­porter

rad­hi­[email protected]

An­gel­i­ca was a beau­ti­ful an­gel, an A stu­dent whose pres­ence touched the lives of all who knew her.

That was how act­ing prin­ci­pal Wahi­da Mo­hammed-Nar­ine re­mem­bered sev­en-year-old An­gel­i­ca Jo­gie, a Stan­dard One pupil of San Fer­nan­do TML Pri­ma­ry School, whose sud­den and trag­ic death has plunged her school and com­mu­ni­ty in­to mourn­ing.

In a let­ter to par­ents dat­ed April 9, Mo­hammed-Nar­ine de­scribed An­gel­i­ca as “bright, beau­ti­ful, well-dis­ci­plined and full of promise.” She said An­gel­i­ca’s “gen­tle spir­it and pos­i­tive pres­ence touched the lives of her class­mates, teach­ers and all who had the priv­i­lege of know­ing her.”

An­gel­i­ca died fol­low­ing a ma­rine in­ci­dent in which she was struck by a jet ski op­er­a­tor. De­tails sur­round­ing the cir­cum­stances of the col­li­sion are still emerg­ing, but ear­ly re­ports in­di­cate that the jet ski op­er­a­tor was reck­less as he op­er­at­ed the wa­ter­craft near the bathing area.

Mo­hammed-Nar­ine said the tragedy has dev­as­tat­ed the school com­mu­ni­ty, and grief coun­sel­lors are now be­ing mo­bilised to sup­port stu­dents and staff strug­gling to process the loss.

She said the Min­istry of Ed­u­ca­tion, along with the Vic­to­ria Ed­u­ca­tion Dis­trict and the Stu­dent Sup­port Ser­vices Di­vi­sion, has com­mit­ted to pro­vid­ing on­go­ing coun­selling—par­tic­u­lar­ly for An­gel­i­ca’s class­mates, her sib­ling’s class and teach­ers di­rect­ly af­fect­ed by her pass­ing.

“This is a heart­break­ing tragedy for our en­tire school com­mu­ni­ty,” Mo­hammed-Nar­ine wrote, ex­tend­ing con­do­lences to An­gel­i­ca’s par­ents and fam­i­ly while urg­ing uni­ty and sup­port in the days ahead.

She said that, for many at the school, An­gel­i­ca was more than just an ex­cel­lent stu­dent. Friends and teach­ers re­mem­ber her as kind, dis­ci­plined and qui­et­ly de­ter­mined—qual­i­ties that made her stand out both aca­d­e­m­i­cal­ly and per­son­al­ly.

An­gel­i­ca’s death has al­so raised wider con­cerns about safe­ty on Trinidad and To­ba­go’s wa­ter­ways, par­tic­u­lar­ly dur­ing peak recre­ation­al pe­ri­ods, when jet skis and oth­er high-speed ves­sels are fre­quent­ly in use. Ques­tions are now be­ing asked about en­force­ment, op­er­a­tor ac­count­abil­i­ty and whether ex­ist­ing laws are suf­fi­cient to pre­vent sim­i­lar tragedies. The in­ci­dent has sparked out­rage and re­newed calls for tighter reg­u­la­tion of wa­ter­craft use.