Joshua Samaroo’s dad gets $100K bail after week in custody

Christo­pher Sama­roo, the fa­ther of po­lice shoot­ing vic­tim Joshua Sama­roo, was re­unit­ed with his fam­i­ly on Tues­day night, af­ter he was grant­ed $100,000 sta­tion bail.

Emerg­ing in­to the arms of a rel­a­tive who ar­rived to take him home, Sama­roo re­mained qui­et as he ex­it­ed the Bel­mont Po­lice Sta­tion.

The se­nior Sama­roo was charged with a sum­ma­ry of­fence un­der Reg­u­la­tion 11(a) of the Emer­gency Pow­ers Reg­u­la­tions, which makes it an of­fence to at­tempt, whether ver­bal­ly or by oth­er means, to in­flu­ence pub­lic opin­ion in a man­ner that could prej­u­dice pub­lic safe­ty.

He was re­leased from the Bel­mont Po­lice Sta­tion around 8.30 pm, hours af­ter he re­turned from the Port-of-Spain Gen­er­al Hos­pi­tal (PoS­GH), where he had been ward­ed for sev­er­al days af­ter com­plain­ing of feel­ing un­well while in po­lice cus­tody.

The se­nior Sama­roo was ar­rest­ed on June 22, af­ter he vis­it­ed the St Clair Po­lice Sta­tion to “clear up” sedi­tious state­ments he al­leged­ly made on the Eye on De­pen­den­cy pro­gramme on Fa­ther’s Day.

At­tor­ney Aaron Lewis ac­com­pa­nied Sama­roo to the Cen­tral Po­lice Sta­tion, Port-of-Spain, on the day he was ar­rest­ed, as he pre­sent­ed him­self to ad­dress con­cerns that had arisen out of the ra­dio pro­gramme, which he claimed were mis­con­strued and tak­en out of con­text.

Joshua Sama­roo was killed by po­lice in Jan­u­ary dur­ing a shootout in St Au­gus­tine, fol­low­ing a high-speed chase that start­ed in Mal­oney.