Sealy’s sufficiency hearing postponed to 2027

Ka­ia Sealy’s suf­fi­cien­cy hear­ing over eight charges lev­eled against her in re­la­tion to a po­lice-in­volved shoot­ing in Jan­u­ary which claimed the life of her part­ner has been post­poned to next year.

The hear­ing, in which the ev­i­dence against an ac­cused is analysed to de­ter­mine if they should face tri­al, was set to com­mence be­fore High Court Mas­ter Nazeera Ali, this morn­ing.

How­ev­er, when the case was called, Sealy’s lead at­tor­ney Lar­ry Williams re­quest­ed an ad­journ­ment.

Williams apol­o­gised as he ad­mit­ted that Sealy’s de­fence team had failed to meet dead­lines for mak­ing their fil­ings in the case and was not pre­pared to go ahead with the hear­ing.

While State pros­e­cu­tor An­ju Bho­la stat­ed that she and her team were ready to pro­ceed with the case hav­ing filed their ev­i­dence in­clud­ing 44 wit­ness state­ments, she did not ob­ject to the ad­journ­ment.

Mas­ter Ali in­formed Williams that the ap­pli­ca­tion for ex­ten­sions and an ad­journ­ment should have been filed well in ad­vance of the sched­uled hear­ing.

“The rules are if there were any is­sues lead­ing to de­lay, the court and the oth­er par­ties ought to have been in­formed,” Mas­ter Ali said.

She still grant­ed ex­ten­sions to com­plete the fil­ings and ad­journed the hear­ing to March 23, next year.

Dur­ing the hear­ing, Williams ap­plied for Sealy’s bail con­di­tions to be var­ied for her to re­side at her sis­ter’s home in­stead of her moth­er’s home.

Williams said that Sealy’s moth­er lives in a three-storey build­ing and Sealy has dif­fi­cul­ties ac­cess­ing it based on her con­tin­u­ing mo­bil­i­ty is­sues fol­low­ing the shoot­ing.

Bho­la did not ob­ject to the change of ad­dress but not­ed that the lo­ca­tion would have to be in­spect­ed by the po­lice be­fore it is of­fi­cial­ly con­firmed.

The charges arose from a con­tro­ver­sial po­lice-in­volved shoot­ing at the cor­ner of Col­lege Road and Bassie Street Ex­ten­sion, St Au­gus­tine, on Jan­u­ary 20.

The shoot­ing sparked protest ac­tion af­ter CCTV footage, which ap­peared to show the of­fi­cers shoot­ing the car af­ter Sealy’s part­ner Joshua Sama­roo at­tempt­ed to sur­ren­der, was shared on so­cial me­dia.

At the time, the T&T Po­lice Ser­vice (TTPS) claimed that the footage on­ly pro­vid­ed a brief and in­com­plete snap­shot of the in­ci­dent be­tween the of­fi­cers and the cou­ple that re­sult­ed in the shoot­ing.

Sealy was charged with un­law­ful­ly killing Sama­roo (manslaugh­ter); shoot­ing at po­lice of­fi­cers Quin­cy Si­mon, Dar­ryl Bartholomew, and Gary Dun­can with in­tent to cause them griev­ous bod­i­ly harm; pos­ses­sion of a Glock pis­tol and two rounds of am­mu­ni­tion; pos­ses­sion of a firearm with in­tent to en­dan­ger life; and dis­charg­ing a firearm with­in 40 me­tres of a pub­lic road.

Sealy, a 25-year-old moth­er of a five-year-old child, was se­ri­ous­ly in­jured in the shoot­ing and left a para­plegic.

She went to the Unit­ed States for treat­ment be­fore re­turn­ing in June to face the charges.

Sealy was grant­ed $700,000 bail and was per­mit­ted to to re­turn to the US pe­ri­od­i­cal­ly to con­tin­ue treat­ment and re­ha­bil­i­ta­tion.

Sealy’s lawyers are ex­pect­ed to pur­sue a no case sub­mis­sion over there be­ing in­suf­fi­cient ev­i­dence to sus­tain the charges when the suf­fi­cien­cy hear­ing takes place next year.

Sealy is al­so be­ing rep­re­sent­ed by Fay­ola Sandy, and Sta­cy Ben­jamin-Roach. Bis­ram Ram­dath, and Dav­eanan Ra­ma­ran ap­peared along­side Bho­la for the Of­fice of the Di­rec­tor of Pub­lic Pros­e­cu­tions (DPP).

The case is set to come up for sta­tus hear­ing on Jan­u­ary 20, 2027.