Stephon Nicholas

To­ba­go Cor­re­spon­dent

Al­most two months af­ter a jet ski ac­ci­dent in To­ba­go claimed the life of his daugh­ter, Arnold Jo­gie says he is still await­ing jus­tice.

Sev­en-year-old An­gel­i­ca Jo­gie was killed on April 8 when a jet ski en­tered a bathing-on­ly zone at Pi­geon Point beach and struck her.

Three oth­er rel­a­tives who were in the wa­ter with her were al­so in­jured but sur­vived the or­deal.

A 32-year-old man who al­leged­ly fled the scene was ar­rest­ed the fol­low­ing day at his home in Canaan. How­ev­er, he was lat­er re­leased by po­lice pend­ing fur­ther in­quiries.

The pub­lic has been crit­i­cal of the pace of the in­ves­ti­ga­tion and the ab­sence of charges so far.

In a What­sApp mes­sage to Guardian Me­dia on Tues­day, Jo­gie said the on­ly in­for­ma­tion he has re­ceived is that the mat­ter re­mains un­der ac­tive in­ves­ti­ga­tion by law en­force­ment.

While de­clin­ing to say whether the fam­i­ly is con­sid­er­ing le­gal ac­tion against the To­ba­go House of As­sem­bly (THA), Jo­gie said the out­come of the crim­i­nal in­ves­ti­ga­tion re­mains the fam­i­ly’s main pri­or­i­ty.

Asked what mes­sage he want­ed to send to po­lice, he replied: “Make sure we get jus­tice for this in­ci­dent.”

The tragedy sparked na­tion­al con­cern over the safe­ty of beach­go­ers and the reg­u­la­tion of jet ski op­er­a­tions.

On Sun­day, jet skis were ob­served speed­ing just a few me­tres be­yond the rope de­mar­cat­ing the bathing area at Store Bay.

A Store Bay of­fi­cial, who re­quest­ed anonymi­ty, told Guardian Me­dia that there have been no of­fi­cial com­plaints re­gard­ing jet ski op­er­a­tions at that lo­ca­tion.

Dur­ing a ple­nary sit­ting on April 23, an irate Chief Sec­re­tary Far­ley Au­gus­tine said jet skis con­tin­ued to pose a threat to beach­go­ers at Pi­geon Point even af­ter the child’s death.

He said po­lice had been no­ti­fied but ex­pressed dis­sat­is­fac­tion with their re­sponse.

The THA sub­se­quent­ly sought the in­ter­ven­tion of the court and was grant­ed an emer­gency in­junc­tion ban­ning jet skis from op­er­at­ing at Pi­geon Point and with­in the Buc­coo Reef Ma­rine Park.

How­ev­er, on May 28, a High Court judge out­lined nine con­di­tions that must be sat­is­fied be­fore op­er­a­tors can re­gain ac­cess to those ar­eas.

Among the re­stric­tions is the im­ple­men­ta­tion of a 100-me­tre buffer zone be­tween jet skis and any buoy or bar­ri­er mark­ing a re­strict­ed bathing area at Pi­geon Point.

Asked whether a sim­i­lar re­stric­tion would be im­ple­ment­ed at Store Bay, the of­fi­cial said there were no plans to do so.

“There is no im­me­di­ate con­cern in terms of dan­ger to per­sons us­ing the beach. The area is zoned off,” she said.

“If there is a prob­lem, the life­guard will bring it to our at­ten­tion, and that hasn’t hap­pened.”

An­oth­er of­fi­cial from the Di­vi­sion of Tourism, Cul­ture and An­tiq­ui­ties al­so dis­missed con­cerns, say­ing: “Store Bay is op­er­at­ing nor­mal.”

Ef­forts to con­tact Sec­re­tary of Tourism Zor­isha Hack­ett for com­ment were un­suc­cess­ful up to pub­li­ca­tion.