Police await ‘critical’ info in fatal jet ski probe

Stephon Nicholas

To­ba­go Cor­re­spon­dent

The po­lice are await­ing a crit­i­cal piece of in­for­ma­tion in their probe in­to the fa­tal jet ski in­ci­dent that claimed the life of sev­en-year-old An­gel­i­ca Jo­gie.

An­gel­i­ca was killed on April 8 when a jet ski ploughed in­to a bathing-on­ly zone at Pi­geon Point beach and struck her.

Eye­wit­ness­es claimed the jet ski dri­ver fled the scene af­ter hit­ting the child and three of her rel­a­tives.

The for­mer San Fer­nan­do TML stu­dent was va­ca­tion­ing in To­ba­go with her fam­i­ly for East­er when tragedy un­fold­ed.

A sus­pect was ar­rest­ed on April 9 at his Canaan home, but was lat­er re­leased pend­ing in­ves­ti­ga­tions.

Speak­ing with Guardian Me­dia yes­ter­day, Se­nior Su­per­in­ten­dent Rod­hill Kirk said the Di­rec­tor of Pub­lic Pros­e­cu­tions has al­ready been con­sult­ed, and po­lice will do their due dili­gence.

“There is some­thing that we await, which lends to a crit­i­cal part of the in­ves­ti­ga­tion. I wouldn’t dis­close what it is. Af­ter that, we would do what we need to do,” he said.

Mean­while, jet ski op­er­a­tors and the To­ba­go House of As­sem­bly (THA) will re­turn to court to­day fol­low­ing the ex­ten­sion of an in­junc­tion ban­ning the wa­ter­craft from the Buc­coo Reef Ma­rine Park and Pi­geon Point Her­itage Park.

The THA went to court on April 23 to se­cure an emer­gency in­junc­tion af­ter com­plaints that jet skis were still il­le­gal­ly en­ter­ing Pi­geon Point and threat­en­ing the safe­ty of bathers.

On April 30, Jus­tice Sher­lanne Pierre or­dered at­tor­neys for both par­ties to vis­it the ma­rine park and re­port whether it was prop­er­ly de­mar­cat­ed with buoys.

That vis­it took place on May 4, with on­ly one buoy al­leged­ly be­ing found.

At­tor­ney Saman­tha Law­son, coun­sel for the jet ski op­er­a­tors, said her clients were un­aware where they could legal­ly ply their trade.

In the ab­sence of clar­i­ty, she said they have de­cid­ed to halt all op­er­a­tions for fear of con­tra­ven­ing the in­junc­tion. She said for most of them, the com­mer­cial jet ski in­dus­try is their pri­ma­ry source of in­come, and the ban is dri­ving them in­to hard­ship.

The judge stressed that a bal­ance must be struck be­tween the safe­ty of bathers and the bread and but­ter of the de­fen­dants.

The THA is be­ing rep­re­sent­ed by at­tor­ney Christlyn Moore.