An­na-Lisa Paul

Se­nior po­lice of­fi­cers in­ves­ti­gat­ing last week's planass­ing in­ci­dent in­volv­ing Shane Gopeesingh, son of Ed­u­ca­tion Min­is­ter Tim Gopeesingh, say an ar­rest is im­mi­nent. The T&T Guardian has learnt that the five-day-old in­ves­ti­ga­tion is "al­most through" and that state­ments had been al­ready been record­ed from the key par­ties in­volved.

Mean­while, planass vic­tim Gre­go­ry Wight is at the fore­front of or­gan­is­ing an an­ti-vi­o­lence march to ed­u­cate young­sters about be­ing more tol­er­ant and ac­cept­ing of their fel­low­man. In an in­ter­view on Thurs­day, Wight said the march will be timed to co­in­cide with the clos­ing of the school term in De­cem­ber. Al­though it has been more than ten says since the at­tack, Wight has vowed to "push for­ward" with the mat­ter in which the min­is­ter's son has been cit­ed as the al­leged per­pe­tra­tor.

The younger Gopeesingh al­leged­ly planassed Wight on Sep­tem­ber 18 out­side the Brook­lyn Bar in Wood­brook. The in­ci­dent was cap­tured by a pri­vate se­cu­ri­ty cam­era and lat­er post­ed on YouTube. Af­ter a re­port to the po­lice, an in­ves­ti­ga­tion was launched in­to the in­ci­dent.

Re­it­er­at­ing his dis­ap­point­ment over how long it was tak­ing the po­lice to take ac­tion, Wight said, "If I had done that to him, I would have been ar­rest­ed two hours lat­er and treat­ed like a crim­i­nal. I am ex­treme­ly dis­ap­point­ed that even af­ter the vi­o­lent act which was per­pe­trat­ed against me, the per­pe­tra­tor is still liv­ing free and en­joy­ing him­self." Wight said most of his time is now spent tak­en up with this mat­ter which was caus­ing his busi­ness to suf­fer be­cause he could no longer sleep or con­cen­trate.

Wight said his ex­pe­ri­ence had shown him that some­thing need­ed to be done as every day, T&T con­tin­ues to lose peo­ple through ig­no­rance and vi­o­lence. As a re­sult, Wight said he was in talks with his COP col­leagues to host an an­ti-vi­o­lence march in a bid to ex­pose chil­dren to con­flict-res­o­lu­tion meth­ods and non-vi­o­lent ways of set­tling dis­putes. Se­nior po­lice yes­ter­day de­clined to re­veal the sta­tus of the in­ves­ti­ga­tion. How­ev­er, the T&T Guardian has learnt that a file was ex­pect­ed to be sent to the Di­rec­tor of Pub­lic Pros­e­cu­tions for di­rec­tions.