Jet ski horror

Stephon Nicholas

To­ba­go Cor­re­spon­dent

A per­fect day at the beach end­ed in hor­ror yes­ter­day, af­ter a run­away jet ski ploughed in­to a va­ca­tion­ing Bar­rack­pore fam­i­ly and killed sev­en-year-old An­gel­i­ca Jo­gie at Pi­geon Point, To­ba­go.

Scores of vis­i­tors, both lo­cal and for­eign, were at the pop­u­lar beach re­lax­ing af­ter the East­er week­end when tragedy struck.

Ac­cord­ing to re­ports, around 4.30 pm, Jo­gie was play­ing in the wa­ter with a large group of rel­a­tives, with­in the area des­ig­nat­ed for bathing on­ly, when the jet ski sud­den­ly mo­tored past the bar­ri­er and slammed in­to An­gel­i­ca, her par­ents and her un­cle.

The jet ski op­er­a­tor nev­er stopped and re­mained on the run from the po­lice last night.

The in­ci­dent caused mas­sive pan­ic as rel­a­tives pulled the bleed­ing and un­con­scious child to the shore. Life­guards rushed to their as­sis­tance and ad­min­is­tered CPR, but An­gel­i­ca re­mained un­re­spon­sive.

Con­cerned on­look­ers found a doc­tor, a UK vis­i­tor va­ca­tion­ing on the is­land who was at the beach, who al­so tried in vain to re­sus­ci­tate the girl.

Emer­gency re­spon­ders then took her and the in­jured rel­a­tives to the Scar­bor­ough Gen­er­al Hos­pi­tal, where she was lat­er pro­nounced dead.

Im­me­di­ate­ly af­ter the in­ci­dent, the Pi­geon Point Her­itage Park was locked down, with se­cu­ri­ty bar­ring all en­try. The bars and oth­er food out­lets were al­so re­port­ed­ly closed soon af­ter.

In an in­ter­view with Guardian Me­dia, Trinida­di­an cou­ple Suzie and Anand, who went with their daugh­ter to fish at Pi­geon Point, ex­pressed out­rage.

“It sup­posed to be a safe space. It has bar­ri­ers. To know the jet ski came in and broke the bar­ri­ers, I don’t know what to say...Some­times them jet skis does be wild,” Suzie said.

Her hus­band be­lieves the in­dus­try is not prop­er­ly reg­u­lat­ed, not­ing that users and pa­trons are not in­sured if some­thing goes wrong. It’s a risk you tak­ing,” he said.

In an emer­gency me­dia con­fer­ence around 8.05 pm last night, Chief Sec­re­tary Far­ley Au­gus­tine ex­pressed con­do­lences and apol­o­gised to the fam­i­ly.

Au­gus­tine said the en­tire Buc­coo Ma­rine Park, in­clud­ing Pi­geon Point, will be closed to­day to fa­cil­i­tate in­ves­ti­ga­tions. He said the po­lice will be prob­ing the in­ci­dent, while the To­ba­go House of As­sem­bly will al­so launch its own probe.

“We are in­ves­ti­gat­ing on our end to see if work­ers and op­er­a­tors, if they didn’t op­er­ate with­in the sys­tems that they ought to fol­low,” Au­gus­tine said.

He said all stake­hold­ers will be re­mind­ed about the reg­u­la­tions sur­round­ing the park. He al­so con­firmed the jet ski op­er­a­tor re­mained at large af­ter flee­ing the scene.

“The op­er­a­tor of the jet ski should not be hid­ing. You should re­al­ly make your­self avail­able for a con­ver­sa­tion with the TTPS so we can know how the jet ski end­ed up in the zone des­ig­nat­ed for bathers,” Au­gus­tine said.

He re­vealed that the THA was found legal­ly li­able for a sim­i­lar in­ci­dent in­volv­ing a jet ski in the past at Pi­geon Point, and warned op­er­a­tors that tough leg­is­la­tion is com­ing to crack down on il­le­gal ac­tiv­i­ties.

“It just shows that when peo­ple don’t fol­low the rules, we end up in tragedy.”

At the Scar­bor­ough Hos­pi­tal last night, a rel­a­tive of An­gel­i­ca, who did not want to be named, said she re­mained stunned by the in­ci­dent.

“Is a whole group of us was bathing. How he could not see us? He did not even stop when we shout out. He just looked back and dri­ve off,” she said.

She said her hus­band (An­gel­i­ca’s un­cle) re­ceived a gash to his head while An­gel­i­ca’s moth­er was suf­fer­ing from im­mense pain to her back. An­gel­i­ca’s fa­ther was al­so se­ri­ous­ly in­jured.

The in­ci­dent comes less than one month af­ter Au­gus­tine vowed to stamp out law­less be­hav­iour at the Buc­coo Ma­rine Park dur­ing a ple­nary sit­ting.

Tourism Sec­re­tary Zor­isha Hack­ett vis­it­ed the fam­i­ly at the hos­pi­tal last night to ex­press her con­do­lences.

Mean­while, in a state­ment last evening, the Di­vi­sion of Tourism, Cul­ture and An­tiq­ui­ties con­demned un­safe or unau­tho­rised op­er­a­tions of wa­ter­craft with­in des­ig­nat­ed bathing ar­eas. The di­vi­sion not­ed that it is­sued an April 2 ad­vi­so­ry which re­in­forced reg­u­la­tions gov­ern­ing the use of the ma­rine park.

“That ad­vi­so­ry clear­ly out­lined op­er­a­tional re­quire­ments and safe­ty pro­to­cols for all ma­rine park users, in­clud­ing strict re­stric­tions on unau­tho­rised jet ski ac­tiv­i­ty with­in the park.”

The THA has al­so promised to pro­vide coun­selling to the vic­tims.