Se­nior prison of­fi­cer Garth Gua­da, who re­mains in­car­cer­at­ed at the Teteron Bar­racks in Ch­aguara­mas, was tak­en to hos­pi­tal on Thurs­day for med­ical treat­ment af­ter he com­plained of feel­ing un­well.

Claim­ing her client had to be treat­ed for se­vere de­hy­dra­tion, at­tor­ney Krys­tal Primus yes­ter­day ex­pressed anger over the con­tin­ued de­nial by au­thor­i­ties to al­low her ac­cess to her client.

As such, she was un­able to vouch for his men­tal and phys­i­cal well-be­ing, as she added, “He is on­ly be­ing giv­en fish to eat at Teteron, and he is al­ler­gic to that.”

Primus and at­tor­ney San­jiv Bood­hu are both rep­re­sent­ing Gua­da, who was de­tained on Au­gust 21 via a Pre­ven­tive De­ten­tion Or­der (PDO).

He had been ini­tial­ly in­car­cer­at­ed at the East­ern Cor­rec­tion­al Re­ha­bil­i­ta­tion Cen­tre (ECRC) in San­ta Rosa and lat­er re­lo­cat­ed to the mil­i­tary base, join­ing sev­er­al high-risk in­mates who were re­moved from the Max­i­mum Se­cu­ri­ty Prison in Arou­ca since the State of Emer­gency (SoE) took ef­fect on Ju­ly 18.

Primus claimed Gua­da con­tin­ues to be de­prived of med­ica­tion that had been pre­scribed for him weeks ago.

A re­quest to the prison au­thor­i­ties for a meet­ing with Gua­da on Tues­day re­mained unan­swered up to yes­ter­day, and ac­cord­ing to Primus, “They are keep­ing me from talk­ing to him.”

“He com­plained of not get­ting wa­ter, se­vere back pains, and headaches. He was un­able to sleep, and the in­fir­mary doc­tor would have pre­scribed some med­ica­tion for him two or three weeks ago, and to date, he has not been giv­en that med­ica­tion.”

Re­veal­ing his at­tor­neys had gone to the Port-of-Spain Gen­er­al Hos­pi­tal (POS­GH) on Thurs­day when Gua­da was ad­mit­ted for treat­ment, in a bid to see and talk with him, Primus said, “We weren’t able to, but we were told that he was se­vere­ly de­hy­drat­ed, and as a re­sult of not be­ing giv­en the pre­scribed med­ica­tion, his heart was rac­ing.”

She said they were in­formed by peo­ple at the hos­pi­tal that Gua­da’s re­quest to speak with a psy­chi­a­trist had al­so been de­nied.

Gua­da was re­turned to the Teteron Bar­racks sev­er­al hours lat­er.

Primus and Bood­hu were ex­pect­ed to despatch let­ters to Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad Bisses­sar, as well as Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er Al­lis­ter Gue­var­ro and act­ing Pris­ons Com­mis­sion­er Hay­den Forde yes­ter­day, ap­peal­ing for their in­ter­ven­tion in the mat­ter.

And re­spond­ing to con­cerns by per­sons at the POS­GH that the fa­cil­i­ty had been locked down dur­ing the time Gua­da had been brought in­to the Ac­ci­dent and Emer­gency De­part­ment, Chief Ex­ec­u­tive Of­fi­cer of the North West Re­gion­al Health Au­thor­i­ty (NWRHA), re­tired Ma­jor An­tho­ny Blake, said this was part of the nor­mal pro­to­cols em­ployed when­ev­er “high val­ue pris­on­ers” were pre­sent­ed for treat­ment.

In a brief in­ter­view with Guardian Me­dia yes­ter­day, he said that an ad­di­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty blan­ket would have been con­fined to the area where Gua­da was be­ing treat­ed and would not have dis­rupt­ed the hos­pi­tal’s op­er­a­tions oth­er­wise.

He said the re­fined se­cu­ri­ty pro­to­cols had gone in­to ef­fect since the June 2024 shoot­ing at the fa­cil­i­ty, with staff be­ing con­stant­ly trained on how to re­spond in the event of a shoot­ing.