An­na-Lisa Paul

Six months af­ter TV6 video ed­i­tor Kevin Ward lost his life in a ve­hic­u­lar ac­ci­dent, Ward's child­hood friend has ap­peared in court charged with caus­ing his death by dan­ger­ous dri­ving. Ko­re Joseph, 26, of Diego Mar­tin Main Road, Diego Mar­tin, was ar­rest­ed yes­ter­day af­ter a war­rant, which was is­sued on Mon­day, was ex­e­cut­ed on him short­ly be­fore 8 am.

Ward sus­tained se­ri­ous in­juries in the ac­ci­dent in Barataria last year, in which he was thrown through a rear win­dow of the ve­hi­cle. He lat­er died in his moth­er's arms at the Port-of-Spain Gen­er­al Hos­pi­tal, short­ly af­ter telling her he be­lieved he would not live.

Joseph, who has been em­ployed as a tech­ni­cian at Vem­co Lim­it­ed for the past two-and-a-half years, was slapped with five charges aris­ing out of the ac­ci­dent, which oc­curred around 6 am on Ju­ly 14, 2012, at the cor­ner of Sixth Av­enue and the Pri­or­i­ty Bus Route, Barataria.

He ap­peared be­fore Chief Mag­is­trate Mar­cia Ay­ers-Cae­sar in the Port-of-Spain Eighth Court, rep­re­sent­ed by at­tor­ney Mansergh Grif­fith. The charges in­clude dri­ving with­out in­sur­ance, breach­ing the no-right turn traf­fic sign, caus­ing the death of Ward by dan­ger­ous dri­ving, ut­ter­ing a forged in­sur­ance doc­u­ment in the name of Ko­re Joseph and ut­ter­ing a doc­u­ment close­ly re­sem­bling a cer­tifi­cate of in­sur­ance so as to de­ceive.

Ap­peal­ing for rea­son­able bail, Grif­fith told the court Joseph had no pre­vi­ous con­vic­tions or pend­ing mat­ters and it was his first brush with the law. While Joseph had to be coaxed to lift his head and speak up dur­ing the pro­ceed­ings, his im­me­di­ate fam­i­ly, in­clud­ing moth­er, fa­ther, sis­ter and grand­moth­er, re­mained qui­et­ly seat­ed in the back­bench of the pub­lic gallery look­ing on in­tent­ly. None of Ward's rel­a­tives were present.

With no ob­jec­tions from Sgt Lochan on the is­sue of bail, Ay­ers-Cae­sar grant­ed Joseph bail in the amount of $90,000 with a sure­ty to be ap­proved by a clerk of the peace II or III on­ly. Or­der­ing Joseph to sur­ren­der his pass­port and re­port to the West End Po­lice Sta­tion every Mon­day, Ay­ers-Cae­sar lat­er ad­journed the mat­ter to Jan­u­ary 30.