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Saturday, July 12, 2025

Alleged attack on star Grenada athlete

6 Trinis due in court today

by

Sharlene Rampersad
1063 days ago
20220814

Six Trinida­di­an men will ap­pear in the St George’s Mag­is­trates Court in Grena­da to­day to an­swer charges of the al­leged as­sault of Grena­da’s na­tion­al ath­lete, An­der­son Pe­ters. Five of the six, who are crew mem­bers of the Har­bour Mas­ter plea­sure boat, were each charged on Fri­day with one count of griev­ous harm and steal­ing in re­la­tion to Pe­ters.

They have been iden­ti­fied as deck­hand, John Alexan­der, 55, sailor Mikhail John, 35, cap­tain Noel Coop­er, 42, sailor Lance Wig­gins, 45 and sailor Sheon Jack, 28.

They were al­so charged with caus­ing harm to Pe­ter’s broth­er, Kid­don Pe­ters.

The ves­sel’s op­er­a­tion man­ag­er, Abi­o­la Ben­jamin, was charged with as­sault­ing An­der­son Pe­ters.

Ben­jamin is al­so a po­lice of­fi­cer.

The six were de­tained since last Wednes­day as the Roy­al Grena­da Po­lice Force (RGPF) in­ves­ti­gat­ed the al­leged as­sault of Pe­ters while aboard the Har­bour Mas­ter.

Dur­ing that in­ci­dent, Pe­ters was al­leged­ly beat­en and tossed over­board af­ter an event on the cruise boat.

He is the dou­ble world javelin cham­pi­on and revered by Grena­di­ans as a na­tion­al hero. Many of his com­pa­tri­ots have lam­bast­ed T&T in their com­men­tary fol­low­ing the in­ci­dent, say­ing the al­leged be­hav­iour of the Har­bour Mas­ter crew point­ed to a larg­er is­sue of crime and vi­o­lence in T&T.

On Sat­ur­day, in a state­ment shared on so­cial me­dia, the ves­sel’s cap­tain, Coop­er, al­leged it was Pe­ters who start­ed the al­ter­ca­tion.

Coop­er claims Pe­ters and his friend group re­fused to get off the ves­sel as the crew was prepar­ing for an­oth­er par­ty.

He al­so claimed he and oth­er crew mem­bers were as­sault­ed by Pe­ters and his friends.

As de­bate over the in­ci­dent rages on so­cial me­dia, Guardian Me­dia spoke to Grena­di­an jour­nal­ist, Kel­lon Bubb, about the re­ac­tion of the Grena­di­an pub­lic to Coop­er’s state­ment.

Ac­cord­ing to Bubb, who has been a jour­nal­ist for over 20 years, the state­ment may have done more harm than good.

“Grena­di­ans think the state­ment was con­de­scend­ing and it sought to blame the vic­tim, they felt as though it was a dam­age con­trol piece which would not want to help him in court be­cause you would not want to prej­u­dice any case by putting out pub­lic re­la­tion state­ments,” Bubb said.

He said the al­leged as­sault has left Grena­di­an di­vid­ed, as some hold the view­point that all of T&T should not be held ac­count­able for the ac­tions of six cit­i­zens, es­pe­cial­ly giv­en the rich cul­tur­al his­to­ry be­tween both is­lands.

But an­oth­er school of thought is set very much against T&T.

“On the oth­er side of the ledger, there are those who are ex­press­ing an­ti-T&T sen­ti­ment. Peo­ple are say­ing we need to boy­cott Trinida­di­an plea­sure boats that come to Grena­da, we need to not go to Trinidad for Car­ni­val, we need to not eat par­tic­u­lar Trinida­di­an foods, such as roti and so on, which again I guess a lot of it is fu­elled by so­cial me­dia rhetoric and it is not nec­es­sar­i­ly shared by every­one,” Bubb said.

He said there are some Grena­di­ans who are now claim­ing the Har­bour Mas­ter crew were “rough” with them at oth­er events.

Bubb said the six ac­cused may have a long wait for their mat­ter to be com­plet­ed in Grena­da, as just like T&T, the ju­di­cial sys­tem op­er­ates slow­ly.

“We have a se­ri­ous back­log of cas­es here as I be­lieve all the OECS ter­ri­to­ries do, you have is­sues with court fa­cil­i­ties, lawyers have been ad­vo­cat­ing for years for the con­struc­tion of a Hall of Jus­tice in the coun­try so you do have the ca­pac­i­ty to meet the de­mand for cas­es that are brought to the court, it is chal­leng­ing to say the least, that is the chal­lenge that will be pre­sent­ed when these gen­tle­men ap­pear in court,” he said.


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