Christopher Samaroo falls ill in police custody

An­na-Lisa Paul

Se­nior Re­porter

an­[email protected]

Christo­pher Sama­roo had to be tak­en for med­ical treat­ment yes­ter­day, af­ter he com­plained of feel­ing un­well whilst in po­lice cus­tody.

The Mar­aval res­i­dent, who is the fa­ther of po­lice-in­volved shoot­ing vic­tim Joshua Sama­roo, was ar­rest­ed on Tues­day in re­la­tion to an al­leged sedi­tious state­ment he made dur­ing an in­ter­view on the Eye on De­pen­den­cy Pro­gramme on June 19.

Guardian Me­dia learned that Sama­roo was ad­mit­ted to the Ac­ci­dent & Emer­gency De­part­ment of Port-of-Spain Gen­er­al Hos­pi­tal around 7.30 am and re­mained there up to 5.30 pm yes­ter­day.

How­ev­er, he is ex­pect­ed to be charged with a sum­ma­ry of­fence un­der Reg­u­la­tion 11 (a) of the Emer­gency Pow­ers Reg­u­la­tions 2026, which states that no per­son shall, “en­deav­our, whether oral­ly or oth­er­wise, to in­flu­ence pub­lic opin­ion in a man­ner like­ly to be prej­u­di­cial to pub­lic safe­ty.”

A source close to the mat­ter claimed Sama­roo was to be charged up­on his re­lease from hos­pi­tal and would like­ly re­ceive sta­tion bail.

At­tor­neys rep­re­sent­ing Sama­roo sent an email to Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er Al­lis­ter Gue­var­ro on Thurs­day, ex­press­ing con­cern over his phys­i­cal, men­tal and emo­tion­al well-be­ing dur­ing his con­tin­ued in­car­cer­a­tion.

At­tor­neys Criston Williams and Aaron Lewis re­quest­ed that Sama­roo be in­de­pen­dent­ly as­sessed by med­ical pro­fes­sion­als in re­la­tion to a se­ries of med­ical ail­ments and un­der­go a psy­chi­atric eval­u­a­tion.

Williams ex­plained this had be­come nec­es­sary af­ter wit­ness­ing the trans­for­ma­tion Sama­roo had un­der­gone be­tween Jan­u­ary to now.

He said, “The Mr Sama­roo I knew when his son was killed, to now, is like two dif­fer­ent peo­ple. That is a se­ri­ous cause for con­cern.”

Chal­leng­ing the State to in­di­cate what re­sources, if any, were ex­tend­ed to the Sama­roo fam­i­ly to as­sist with coun­selling and long-term psy­cho-so­cial care, Williams stressed, “Mr Sama­roo is not iso­lat­ed in this. There are hun­dreds of peo­ple, in­clud­ing men, women and chil­dren, who are af­fect­ed by such deaths and they all need help from the au­thor­i­ties in terms of cop­ing and mov­ing for­ward.”

The 42-sec­ond clip of Sama­roo’s al­leged ut­ter­ances dur­ing the Fa­ther’s Day seg­ment was post­ed on so­cial me­dia and drew wide­spread crit­i­cism from mem­bers of the pub­lic, while some de­fend­ed him, ar­gu­ing he was still griev­ing the loss of his son.

Sama­roo’s son Joshua was killed by po­lice dur­ing a con­fronta­tion in St Au­gus­tine on Jan­u­ary 20.

Ex­press­ing dis­ap­point­ment with the in­vi­ta­tion by the ra­dio sta­tion for Sama­roo to be part of the line-up while he re­mained mired in grief, Williams ques­tioned, “Should the as­ser­tion be true that he was ac­tu­al­ly on the ra­dio sta­tion...why would a ra­dio sta­tion do this af­ter the DPP came out and warned against not speak­ing about the case?”

He said this was not re­spon­si­ble jour­nal­ism.

Even as he ex­pressed sup­port for the work be­ing done by the CoP, Williams called on him to fo­cus on win­ning back the pop­u­la­tion.

He al­so ap­pealed for more to be done by the T&T Po­lice Ser­vice (TTPS) to en­sure there was a mod­ern vic­tim sup­port mech­a­nism and the nec­es­sary re­sources al­lo­cat­ed to same.

“Look ahead, Com­mis­sion­er,” he urged.

Sama­roo’s girl­friend, Ka­ia Sealy, was al­so in­jured dur­ing the fa­tal po­lice-in­volved shoot­ing at the cor­ner of Col­lege Road and Bassie Street Ex­ten­sion, St Au­gus­tine.

Short­ly af­ter the in­ves­ti­ga­tion be­gan, the moth­er of the cou­ple’s five-year-old daugh­ter was giv­en per­mis­sion to trav­el abroad for med­ical and re­ha­bil­i­ta­tive treat­ment.

She re­turned to T&T on June 17, fol­low­ing which she was ar­rest­ed by in­ves­ti­ga­tors at the Pi­ar­co In­ter­na­tion­al Air­port.

Sealy, 24, was charged with three counts of shoot­ing with in­tent to cause griev­ous bod­i­ly harm to po­lice of­fi­cers; one charge of manslaugh­ter in re­la­tion to Sama­roo’s death, as well as pos­ses­sion of a firearm, pos­ses­sion of am­mu­ni­tion, pos­ses­sion of a firearm to en­dan­ger life and dis­charg­ing a firearm with­in 40 me­tres of a pub­lic place.

Sealy was grant­ed $700,000 bail dur­ing a vir­tu­al court ap­pear­ance on June 18.

She left the coun­try on June 24 to con­tin­ue her treat­ment abroad.

It is not yet known when she will re­turn.