An­na-Lisa Paul

Se­nior Re­porter

an­na-lisa.paul@guardian.co.tt

More than two months af­ter po­lice in­ves­ti­ga­tors were in­struct­ed to charge Ka­ia Sealy with eight of­fences, in­clud­ing the killing of her com­mon-law hus­band Joshua Sama­roo, the Po­lice Com­plaints Au­thor­i­ty (PCA) has yet to com­plete its re­port in­to the fa­tal po­lice shoot­ing.

The Jan­u­ary 20 in­ci­dent at the cor­ner of Col­lege Road and Bassie Street Ex­ten­sion, St Au­gus­tine, re­mains one of the year’s most high-pro­file and con­tro­ver­sial fa­tal en­coun­ters in­volv­ing po­lice.

Pub­lic out­rage over the in­ci­dent in­ten­si­fied af­ter the T&T Po­lice Ser­vice (TTPS) an­nounced that Sealy, 25, would be charged with eight of­fences, in­clud­ing three counts of shoot­ing with in­tent to cause griev­ous bod­i­ly harm against po­lice of­fi­cers. She was al­so charged with manslaugh­ter, in that she un­law­ful­ly killed Sama­roo; pos­ses­sion of a firearm; pos­ses­sion of am­mu­ni­tion; pos­ses­sion of a firearm to en­dan­ger life; and dis­charg­ing a firearm with­in 40 me­tres of a pub­lic place.

Re­spond­ing to ques­tions ear­li­er this week, PCA di­rec­tor David West said the au­thor­i­ty was await­ing a key re­port from the Foren­sic Sci­ence Cen­tre be­fore fi­nal­is­ing its in­ves­ti­ga­tion.

“The PCA is await­ing a re­port from the Foren­sic Sci­ence Cen­tre in the Joshua Sama­roo and Ka­ia Sealy po­lice-in­volved shoot­ing to fi­nalise our re­port,” West said.

He added that in­ves­ti­ga­tors had ben­e­fit­ed sig­nif­i­cant­ly from avail­able video ev­i­dence.

“The PCA was able to gath­er valu­able in­for­ma­tion be­cause of the CCTV cam­era footage that has been analysed by ex­perts,” he said.

Once the re­port is com­plet­ed, the au­thor­i­ty will de­ter­mine whether the mat­ter should be re­ferred to the Di­rec­tor of Pub­lic Pros­e­cu­tions (DPP) or the Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice (CoP, West stat­ed.

The out­stand­ing foren­sic re­port is ex­pect­ed by mid-Sep­tem­ber.

Sealy, a moth­er of one, was grant­ed $700,000 bail dur­ing her first court ap­pear­ance on June 17, sev­er­al hours af­ter re­turn­ing from the Unit­ed States.

She had been trav­el­ling with her moth­er for med­ical treat­ment and was ar­rest­ed by of­fi­cers up­on ar­rival at Pi­ar­co In­ter­na­tion­al Air­port. The hair­styl­ist, whose ad­dress was list­ed as Mendez Dri­ve, Champs Fleurs, was al­so grant­ed per­mis­sion to leave the ju­ris­dic­tion to con­tin­ue med­ical treat­ment as part of her re­ha­bil­i­ta­tion pro­gramme.

A sta­tus hear­ing is sched­uled for Oc­to­ber 8, while a suf­fi­cien­cy hear­ing has been set for Oc­to­ber 22.

Sama­roo, 31, was shot mul­ti­ple times dur­ing a con­fronta­tion with po­lice fol­low­ing a high-speed chase that be­gan in Mal­oney. Days lat­er, footage of the fa­tal shoot­ing was leaked, trig­ger­ing wide­spread pub­lic calls for Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice Al­lis­ter Gue­var­ro to sus­pend the of­fi­cers in­volved pend­ing the out­come of in­ves­ti­ga­tions. His re­fusal to do so sparked fur­ther crit­i­cism and re­newed calls for his res­ig­na­tion.

The in­ci­dent al­so led to sev­er­al protest demon­stra­tions in Port-of-Spain and out­side po­lice sta­tions along the East-West Cor­ri­dor. The protests were led by Sealy’s close friends Alyssa Phillip and Mari­ah Wal­cott.

The demon­stra­tions formed part of the “19 Bul­lets, 19 Protests” cam­paign, named af­ter the num­ber of times Sama­roo was shot dur­ing the in­ci­dent. Dur­ing the cam­paign, Phillip was ar­rest­ed twice for al­leged­ly breach­ing reg­u­la­tions un­der the on­go­ing State of Emer­gency.

The in­tense pub­lic de­bate and wide­spread spec­u­la­tion sur­round­ing the case ul­ti­mate­ly prompt­ed Di­rec­tor of Pub­lic Pros­e­cu­tions Roger Gas­pard to is­sue a warn­ing to me­dia or­gan­i­sa­tions and so­cial me­dia users against pub­lish­ing ma­te­r­i­al that could prej­u­dice the crim­i­nal pro­ceed­ings.