Derek Achong

Se­nior Re­porter

derek.achong@guardian.co.tt

The suf­fi­cien­cy hear­ing of the eight charges lev­elled against hair styl­ist Ka­ia Sealy, re­lat­ed to a fa­tal po­lice-in­volved shoot­ing in Jan­u­ary which claimed the life of her part­ner Joshua Sama­roo, is set to go ahead as sched­uled lat­er this month. 

Dur­ing a sta­tus hear­ing on Thurs­day, High Court Mas­ter Nazeera Ali ex­tend­ed dead­lines for pros­e­cu­tors to file and serve their re­main­ing wit­ness state­ments and for Sealy’s lawyers to file their ev­i­den­tial ob­jec­tions and sub­mis­sions. 

Mas­ter Ali re­served Oc­to­ber 27 for the suf­fi­cien­cy hear­ing, in which she would con­sid­er the ev­i­dence pre­sent­ed by the State and de­ter­mine whether such is enough to war­rant an even­tu­al tri­al in the High Court. 

The charges arose from a con­tro­ver­sial po­lice-in­volved shoot­ing at the cor­ner of Col­lege Road and Bassie Street Ex­ten­sion, St Au­gus­tine, on Jan­u­ary 20. 

The shoot­ing sparked protest ac­tion af­ter CCTV footage, which ap­peared to show the of­fi­cers shoot­ing the car af­ter Sama­roo at­tempt­ed to sur­ren­der, was shared on so­cial me­dia. 

At the time, the Trinidad and To­ba­go Po­lice Ser­vice (TTPS) claimed that the footage on­ly pro­vid­ed a brief and in­com­plete snap­shot of the in­ci­dent be­tween the of­fi­cers and the cou­ple that re­sult­ed in the shoot­ing. 

Sealy was charged with un­law­ful­ly killing Sama­roo (manslaugh­ter); shoot­ing at po­lice of­fi­cers Quin­cy Si­mon, Dar­ryl Bartholomew and Gary Dun­can with in­tent to cause them griev­ous bod­i­ly harm; pos­ses­sion of a Glock pis­tol and two rounds of am­mu­ni­tion; pos­ses­sion of a firearm with in­tent to en­dan­ger life; and dis­charg­ing a firearm with­in 40 me­tres of a pub­lic road. 

Sealy, who was se­ri­ous­ly in­jured in the shoot­ing and left a para­plegic, went to the Unit­ed States for treat­ment be­fore re­turn­ing in June to face the charges. 

She was grant­ed $700,000 bail and was per­mit­ted to re­turn to the US pe­ri­od­i­cal­ly to con­tin­ue treat­ment and re­ha­bil­i­ta­tion. 

Sealy was rep­re­sent­ed by Lar­ry Williams and Fay­ola Sandy.