Warrant issued for Kaia Sealy’s arrest in Joshua Samaroo killing

The woman left paral­ysed af­ter the po­lice shoot­ing that killed Joshua Sama­roo is now fac­ing crim­i­nal charges linked to the same in­ci­dent, months af­ter video footage of the shoot­ing sparked pub­lic out­rage and calls for ac­count­abil­i­ty.

The Trinidad and To­ba­go Po­lice Ser­vice (TTPS) said in a me­dia re­lease, fol­low­ing a com­plet­ed in­ves­ti­ga­tion and le­gal ad­vice from the Of­fice of the Di­rec­tor of Pub­lic Pros­e­cu­tions (DPP), war­rants have been is­sued for the ar­rest of Ka­ia Sealy, 24.

Sealy faces three counts of shoot­ing with in­tent to cause griev­ous bod­i­ly harm against po­lice of­fi­cers un­der the Of­fences Against the Per­son Act.

In­ves­ti­ga­tors al­so ob­tained a war­rant ac­cus­ing Sealy of manslaugh­ter, al­leg­ing she un­law­ful­ly killed Joshua Sama­roo dur­ing the in­ci­dent, along with oth­er re­lat­ed charges.

The war­rants have not yet been ex­e­cut­ed.

The de­vel­op­ment comes af­ter months of protests and pub­lic crit­i­cism fol­low­ing the fa­tal po­lice shoot­ing that killed Sama­roo, 31, and left Sealy with life-al­ter­ing in­juries. Guardian Me­dia pre­vi­ous­ly re­port­ed Sealy re­mained un­able to walk and had been un­der­go­ing dai­ly phys­i­cal ther­a­py af­ter the shoot­ing.

Video footage that sur­faced af­ter the in­ci­dent fu­elled wide­spread out­rage be­cause it ap­peared to con­tra­dict the ini­tial po­lice ac­count of events. Guardian Me­dia pre­vi­ous­ly re­port­ed footage showed Sama­roo with his hands ex­tend­ed in what ob­servers de­scribed as an ap­par­ent sign of sur­ren­der be­fore of­fi­cers opened fire.

The pub­licly cir­cu­lat­ed footage cap­tures the fi­nal mo­ments of the con­fronta­tion but does not show what hap­pened be­fore the shoot­ing be­gan.

Po­lice pre­vi­ous­ly claimed Sama­roo fired at of­fi­cers first dur­ing a high-speed chase, prompt­ing of­fi­cers to re­turn fire. That ac­count faced scruti­ny af­ter CCTV footage emerged and protests spread across the coun­try de­mand­ing jus­tice for Sama­roo and Sealy.

In its state­ment to­day, the TTPS al­so sought to clar­i­fy com­ments made dur­ing a me­dia brief­ing by Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice Al­lis­ter Gue­var­ro.

“The Com­mis­sion­er in­di­cat­ed on­ly that in­ves­ti­ga­tors were di­rect­ed, fol­low­ing con­sul­ta­tion with the Of­fice of the Di­rec­tor of Pub­lic Pros­e­cu­tions (DPP), to pro­ceed with a se­ries of crim­i­nal charges aris­ing out of the events of Jan­u­ary 20th, 2026,” the TTPS said.

The TTPS added that Com­mis­sion­er Gue­var­ro did not say po­lice of­fi­cers would be charged in con­nec­tion with the mat­ter.