A for­mer Trinidad and To­ba­go Po­lice Ser­vice (TTPS) re­cruit has been ac­quit­ted of rape and griev­ous sex­u­al as­sault charges.

Kai Lovell was found not guilty at the con­clu­sion of his tri­al be­fore Jus­tice Lisa Ram­sumair-Hinds and a nine-mem­ber ju­ry. He had been ac­cused of at­tack­ing a woman in 2024.

Lovell was ar­rest­ed and charged while await­ing for­mal ap­point­ment to the TTPS, hav­ing re­cent­ly com­plet­ed train­ing at the Po­lice Acad­e­my in St James. He de­nied the al­le­ga­tions, main­tain­ing that the en­counter was con­sen­su­al.

Fol­low­ing the charges, he was re­moved from the re­cruit­ment process, which he had been due to com­plete a week lat­er.

Dur­ing the tri­al, which be­gan last Mon­day, de­fence at­tor­ney Aris­sa Ma­haraj ar­gued that Lovell had been in a sev­en-month sex­u­al re­la­tion­ship with the com­plainant pri­or to the in­ci­dent. She con­tend­ed that the al­le­ga­tions were fab­ri­cat­ed af­ter Lovell de­clined to make the re­la­tion­ship “of­fi­cial.”

Ma­haraj al­so point­ed to the com­plainant’s ac­tions on the day in ques­tion, not­ing that she left work to vis­it Lovell at his home and lat­er re­turned to work. She fur­ther high­light­ed that the re­port was made sev­er­al days af­ter the al­leged in­ci­dent and raised what she de­scribed as in­con­sis­ten­cies in the woman’s ev­i­dence.

Af­ter de­lib­er­at­ing and con­sid­er­ing the judge’s sum­ma­tion of the le­gal is­sues, the ju­ry re­turned unan­i­mous not guilty ver­dicts.

Guardian Me­dia un­der­stands that Lovell’s at­tor­neys are ex­pect­ed to write to the TTPS to de­ter­mine whether he may re­sume the re­cruit­ment process fol­low­ing his ac­quit­tal.

The pros­e­cu­tion was led by Char­maine Samuel and Gilliana Guy on be­half of the Of­fice of the Di­rec­tor of Pub­lic Pros­e­cu­tions.