Kaia Sealy ‘in disbelief’ over manslaughter charge in Joshua Samaroo shooting

Ka­ia Sealy says she is “shocked and deeply dis­tressed” by re­ports that she is fac­ing crim­i­nal charges in con­nec­tion with the fa­tal shoot­ing of her part­ner, Joshua Sama­roo, in­sist­ing she re­mains in­no­cent and has been wrong­ly por­trayed.

In a state­ment is­sued Sat­ur­day, Sealy de­scribed the Jan­u­ary 20 in­ci­dent as a life-chang­ing tragedy that “ripped apart” her fam­i­ly, leav­ing her griev­ing Sama­roo, the fa­ther of her five-year-old daugh­ter, while al­so re­cov­er­ing from se­vere in­juries she sus­tained dur­ing the shoot­ing.

“This is not a movie. This is my night­mare of a re­al­i­ty,” she said.

Sealy said the pub­lic was ini­tial­ly told the in­ci­dent in­volved a shootout, but claimed ques­tions arose af­ter video footage cir­cu­lat­ed show­ing Sama­roo with his hands out­side a ve­hi­cle mo­ments be­fore he was shot mul­ti­ple times.

She said this led to wide­spread con­cern about the of­fi­cial ac­count of events.

She said that while the pub­lic viewed and de­bat­ed the footage, she was in hos­pi­tal un­der armed po­lice guard, paral­ysed and un­able to move, with no clear ex­pla­na­tion giv­en to her or her fam­i­ly about why she was be­ing guard­ed.

Sealy al­so said her fam­i­ly faced dif­fi­cul­ties ac­cess­ing her in hos­pi­tal, and that her at­tor­ney, Fay­ola Sandy, re­peat­ed­ly vis­it­ed to clar­i­fy whether she was be­ing de­tained. She said a habeas cor­pus ap­pli­ca­tion was even­tu­al­ly filed be­fore po­lice re­stric­tions were lift­ed, af­ter which she was es­cort­ed home.

She fur­ther claimed that po­lice re­tained elec­tron­ic de­vices tak­en from the ve­hi­cle she was in, hold­ing them for weeks be­fore re­turn­ing them fol­low­ing a le­gal chal­lenge.

Sealy said she and her le­gal team con­tin­ued to co­op­er­ate with in­ves­ti­ga­tors but re­ceived lim­it­ed in­for­ma­tion about the di­rec­tion of the case. She al­so said she on­ly learned through me­dia re­ports that she was al­leged­ly be­ing charged, not through for­mal com­mu­ni­ca­tion or her at­tor­neys.

“Not through a phone call. Not through for­mal cor­re­spon­dence. Not through dis­clo­sure to my at­tor­neys. Through the me­dia,” she said.

She added that even af­ter those re­ports, her at­tor­ney wrote to the Trinidad and To­ba­go Po­lice Ser­vice seek­ing clar­i­fi­ca­tion, but re­ceived no re­sponse.

Sealy, who said she is cur­rent­ly abroad re­ceiv­ing on­go­ing treat­ment and re­ha­bil­i­ta­tion, re­ject­ed any sug­ges­tion of crim­i­nal wrong­do­ing and de­scribed her­self as a moth­er, a Chris­t­ian, and a hard­work­ing woman with no crim­i­nal record.

“I am not a gang­ster. I have nev­er been in trou­ble with the law,” she said.

She main­tained that the full truth of what hap­pened on Jan­u­ary 20, 2026 will even­tu­al­ly emerge.

She added: This state­ment is not a full an­swer to any al­le­ga­tions against me.”

In a me­dia re­lease on Thurs­day, the T&T Po­lice Ser­vice (TTPS) said Di­rec­tor of Pub­lic Pros­e­cu­tion Roger Gas­pard had giv­en them in­struc­tions to charge Sealy with three counts of shoot­ing with in­tent to cause griev­ous bod­i­ly harm to­wards po­lice of­fi­cers and manslaugh­ter in re­la­tion to Sama­roo’s killing.