A 60-year-old woman from Care­nage, whose daugh­ter was bru­tal­ly mur­dered by her abu­sive ex-boyfriend in late 2017, has won a land­mark case over the fail­ure of the po­lice and the Ju­di­cia­ry to af­ford her pro­tec­tion. 

In a 110-page judg­ment de­liv­ered yes­ter­day, High Court Judge Robin Mo­hammed up­held a nov­el con­sti­tu­tion­al claim brought by Tot Lamp­kin against the Of­fice of the At­tor­ney Gen­er­al in re­la­tion to the mur­der of her daugh­ter Saman­tha Is­sacs. 

In his rul­ing, Jus­tice Mo­hammed de­cid­ed to take a bold move to im­pose a pos­i­tive oblig­a­tion on the State to act with due dili­gence in pro­tect­ing an in­di­vid­ual’s con­sti­tu­tion­al rights to life, pro­tec­tion of the law and re­spect for pri­vate and fam­i­ly life from be­ing vi­o­lat­ed by the ac­tions of a non-State of­fi­cial. 

He ad­mit­ted he was tempt­ed to take a safe ap­proach but was per­suad­ed by the ex­cep­tion­al cir­cum­stances of Lamp­kin’s case. 

Jus­tice Mo­hammed said, “The facts of this case and the prepa­ra­tion of this judg­ment have caused me no end of wor­ry to the ex­tent that many a times, in qui­et re­flec­tion, I was al­most per­suad­ed to re­coil in the com­fort zone of ac­cept­ing the ac­cept­ed norm that there are no pos­i­tive oblig­a­tions im­posed on the State to pro­tect the rights and free­doms un­der Sec­tion 4 (a), (b), and (c) of the Con­sti­tu­tion.”

“But this amounts to ‘bury­ing one’s head in the sand’ when so many in­sid­i­ous ac­tiv­i­ties are im­pact­ing so­ci­ety right above sur­face lev­el,” he added. 

He not­ed that Lamp­kin’s case high­light­ed that more had to be done by the State, through its agents and ser­vants, to im­prove how do­mes­tic vi­o­lence cas­es are ad­dressed. 

Stat­ing that a mul­ti­fac­eted ap­proach was re­quired, Jus­tice Mo­hammed said, “It in­volves le­gal mea­sures to pro­tect and sup­port vic­tims, such as re­strain­ing or­ders, safe shel­ters, along with ro­bust law en­force­ment re­spons­es to hold per­pe­tra­tors ac­count­able.”

“It is this court’s earnest de­sire to see the im­ple­men­ta­tion of this mul­ti­di­men­sion­al sys­tem with some ur­gency through col­lec­tive ac­knowl­edge­ment, in­ter­ven­tion and em­pow­er­ment by State au­thor­i­ties to un­rav­el the grip of do­mes­tic vi­o­lence and safe­guard the sanc­ti­ty of our vul­ner­a­ble in so­ci­ety,” he added. 

Al­though Jus­tice Mo­hammed or­dered com­pen­sa­tion for Lamp­kin, who serves as guardian of her daugh­ter’s now ten-year-old son, he will quan­ti­fy such at a lat­er date af­ter con­sid­er­ing ad­di­tion­al sub­mis­sions. 

Ac­cord­ing to the ev­i­dence in the case, Lamp­kin’s daugh­ter be­gan a re­la­tion­ship with Kahriym Gar­cia while she was pur­su­ing a de­gree in bio­chem­istry at the Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies in 2011. 

Isaacs first re­port­ed Gar­cia’s abu­sive be­hav­iour a lit­tle over a year be­fore their son was born in March 2014. 

On May 21, 2013, she re­port­ed that he de­stroyed her cell­phone with a ham­mer be­cause she did not an­swer his calls while she was busy in school. Gar­cia was ques­tioned by the po­lice but was al­lowed to leave af­ter he promised to re­im­burse Isaacs. 

While Lamp­kin claimed that Gar­cia was phys­i­cal­ly abu­sive to her daugh­ter dur­ing her preg­nan­cy, a sec­ond re­port was made to the po­lice in No­vem­ber 2015. Gar­cia, who was armed with a knife, re­port­ed­ly punched Isaacs in her face in front of their tod­dler and de­stroyed fur­ni­ture in the apart­ment they shared. 

Of­fi­cers of the Care­nage Po­lice Sta­tion re­spond­ed to the do­mes­tic dis­tur­bance and re­strained Gar­cia, who was in­struct­ed to pack his be­long­ings and leave the apart­ment. Gar­cia ini­tial­ly com­piled but at­tempt­ed to re­turn af­ter the po­lice left. He fled the scene af­ter he re­alised that Lamp­kin was call­ing back the po­lice. 

Al­though the cou­ple’s ro­man­tic re­la­tion­ship re­port­ed­ly end­ed that night, Isaacs al­leged­ly al­lowed him to re­turn to the apart­ment in ear­ly 2017 af­ter he was shot four times. Gar­cia was asked to leave sev­er­al months lat­er af­ter his vi­o­lent con­duct re­sumed. 

In June 2017, Isaacs made an­oth­er re­port to the po­lice af­ter Gar­cia broke in­to the apart­ment while she was sleep­ing and at­tacked her with a knife. Gar­cia re­port­ed­ly threat­ened to kill Isaacs and her rel­a­tives if she did not agree to rekin­dle their re­la­tion­ship.

Lamp­kin claimed that he on­ly left af­ter her hus­band in­ter­vened and sub­dued Gar­cia. She claimed that al­though the po­lice were con­tact­ed they did not re­spond, as there was no ve­hi­cle at the po­lice sta­tion. 

When Isaacs and Lamp­kin went to the po­lice sta­tion the fol­low­ing day, they were told they would be con­tact­ed by an in­ves­ti­ga­tor. 

Af­ter Isaacs was killed, the Po­lice Com­plaints Au­thor­i­ty (PCA) launched an in­ves­ti­ga­tion in­to the of­fi­cer who gave the as­sur­ance and dis­ci­pli­nary pro­ceed­ings were rec­om­mend­ed. How­ev­er, none were pre­ferred by the Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice. 

Isaacs made her fi­nal re­port to the po­lice one day be­fore she was mur­dered on De­cem­ber 16, 2017. She claimed that Gar­cia at­tacked her out­side her work­place. Gar­cia was warned by a po­lice of­fi­cer, who ad­vised Isaacs to pur­sue a pro­tec­tion or­der. Al­most 24 hours lat­er, Isaacs was found ly­ing on the road out­side a ho­tel at Haig Street in Care­nage. She had been shot in both her legs and her head. She even­tu­al­ly suc­cumbed to her in­juries while re­ceiv­ing treat­ment at hos­pi­tal but not be­fore iden­ti­fy­ing Gar­cia as her at­tack­er.

Po­lice of­fi­cers at­tempt­ed to de­tain Gar­cia but he com­mit­ted sui­cide while they were try­ing to en­ter his apart­ment. 

Sev­er­al months be­fore her mur­der, Isaacs made three ap­pli­ca­tions to the Fam­i­ly Court in re­la­tion to Gar­cia. One ap­pli­ca­tion was for a pro­tec­tion or­der against him, while the two oth­ers were re­lat­ed to the cus­tody of their son and the pay­ment of child main­te­nance. 

When the case first came up for hear­ing, the mag­is­trate was un­avail­able. Dur­ing sub­se­quent hear­ings, Isaacs re­port­ed threats made by Gar­cia, in­clud­ing throw­ing acid in her face and the fact that he had dis­trib­uted nude im­ages of her. 

Isaacs was re­port­ed­ly quizzed by a now-re­tired fe­male se­nior mag­is­trate over her mo­tive for ob­tain­ing the pro­tec­tion or­der and warned against do­ing so sim­ply to re­ceive main­te­nance. 

While Gar­cia claimed that he was not op­posed to the or­der, the ap­pli­ca­tion was even­tu­al­ly dis­missed in Oc­to­ber 2017 af­ter she missed one hear­ing. 

In his judg­ment, Jus­tice Mo­hammed not­ed that State at­tor­neys did not chal­lenge Lamp­kin’s claims that were sup­port­ed by doc­u­men­tary ev­i­dence. 

“Rather, they at­tempt­ed to of­fer ex­pla­na­tions and jus­ti­fi­ca­tions for the State’s ac­tions or in­ac­tions in the giv­en cir­cum­stances,” he said. 

TTPS re­source short­fall no ex­cuse

Deal­ing with the fail­ure of the po­lice to re­spond to Isaacs’ third re­port, Jus­tice Mo­hammed not­ed that it was un­ac­cept­able de­spite the re­source chal­lenges faced by the T&T Po­lice Ser­vice (TTPS). 

“The TTPS ought to have a mech­a­nism in place en­abling them to seek as­sis­tance from neigh­bour­ing po­lice sta­tions to prompt­ly ad­dress live re­ports of threats to life and limb when their own ca­pac­i­ty to re­spond is in­ad­e­quate,” he said. 

He al­so ex­pressed dis­ap­point­ment over the fact that her sub­se­quent re­port was ig­nored. 

“To date, no one has tak­en re­spon­si­bil­i­ty or held ac­count­able for the TTPS’ fail­ure to com­mence in­ves­ti­ga­tions in­to this mat­ter or pros­e­cute Kahriym,” he said. 

He al­so not­ed that the po­lice’s han­dling of that re­port was not an iso­lat­ed in­ci­dent. 

“In all ac­counts in this case there was a to­tal and per­sis­tent fail­ure to in­ves­ti­gate or fol­low up in any of the re­port­ed in­ci­dents which in my opin­ion points to sys­temic fail­ure on the part of the TTPS to pro­tect Saman­tha,” he said. 

Jus­tice Mo­hammed al­so took aim at his for­mer col­league, who he not­ed failed to pro­vide rea­sons for her de­ci­sion to dis­miss Isaacs’ case. 

“Notwith­stand­ing the nu­mer­ous com­plaints of death threats that Saman­tha brought to the mag­is­trate’s at­ten­tion, she failed to take any rea­son­able mea­sures with­in her scope to pro­tect Saman­tha’s life,” he said. 

Lamp­kin was rep­re­sent­ed by Dou­glas Mendes, SC, and Clay Hack­ett. The AG’s Of­fice was rep­re­sent­ed by Fyard Ho­sein, SC, Rishi Dass, SC, Ka­dine Matthew, and Kendra Mark-Gor­don.