It was with a deep sense of sad­ness and some trau­ma that I awoke last Sun­day morn­ing to the de­press­ing news that Dana See­ta­hal had died at the hands of un­known as­sailants in the Wood­brook area.In­ter­est­ing­ly the last per­son about whom my thoughts were cast, and about whom I spoke just about the time of her death and be­fore I re­tired to bed on that fate­ful Sat­ur­day night, was Dana See­ta­hal.

It was just af­ter Sat­ur­day mid­night that en­vi­ron­men­tal cir­cum­stances led me to com­ment to two busi­ness as­so­ciates while over­seas about Dana See­ta­hal adding that she would recog­nise me even from be­hind my back or when she heard my voice, wher­ev­er this was, and she would call out to me by name.What a sad state and great loss for our rain­bow coun­try.

Dana See­ta­hal and I served in the Sen­ate to­geth­er. She was an In­de­pen­dent Sen­a­tor at a time, dur­ing the pe­ri­od No­vem­ber 2006 to May 2010, when I al­so served in the Sen­ate as a Gov­ern­ment Sen­a­tor ap­point­ed by the Peo­ple's Na­tion­al Move­ment (PNM), which was then the Gov­ern­ment in Of­fice.

Dana and I main­tained a pro­fes­sion­al Par­lia­men­tary re­la­tion­ship with­in the Sen­ate Cham­ber and for me it was al­ways like a breath of fresh air to con­verse very eas­i­ly with her in the cor­ri­dors as she took a "smoke break" or in the tea room, on many is­sues of na­tion­al im­por­tance, not the least of which was her in­ter­est in our ini­tia­tives for the re­vi­tal­i­sa­tion of co­coa es­tates.

But more strik­ing­ly for me was her metic­u­lous ob­ses­sion with get­ting the de­tails and speci­fici­ty of lan­guage in the leg­is­la­tion cor­rect when Bills were be­ing de­bat­ed in the Sen­ate. In this re­gard, she was sure to be al­ways very alert es­pe­cial­ly dur­ing the Com­mit­tee stage of the Sen­ate, en­sur­ing cor­rect­ness of any sug­gest­ed amend­ments in the pro­posed law com­ing from any quar­ter.Dana See­ta­hal's death has cer­tain­ly sent shock waves lo­cal­ly, re­gion­al­ly and in­ter­na­tion­al­ly.

Some of the peo­ple who com­mu­ni­cat­ed with me from near and far have ex­pressed tear­ful dis­be­lief on the man­ner of her death and are mourn­ing her pass­ing.The stain of the blood of this mod­est, mea­sured and trust­wor­thy pro­fes­sion­al will re­main etched on the con­science(s) of the peo­ple who mas­ter­mind­ed that plot for her demise.As a for­mer Sen­ate col­league, I take this op­por­tu­ni­ty to con­vey my con­do­lences to the fam­i­ly of Dana See­ta­hal.

I join with the na­tion­al com­mu­ni­ty in mourn­ing Dana's pass­ing and pray to God that her soul will find eter­nal rest.

Arnold Pig­gott