Sascha Wil­son

Se­nior Re­porter

sascha.wil­son@guardian.co.tt

A 49-year-old pri­ma­ry school teacher ac­cused of hav­ing co­caine on the com­pound of a Princes Town school has been or­dered to un­der­go a 14-day psy­chi­atric eval­u­a­tion.

Kevin Do­man, who has taught for 20 years, was ar­rest­ed on Tues­day at St Julien Pres­by­ter­ian School and charged with pos­ses­sion of co­caine for the pur­pose of traf­fick­ing. Po­lice said the drugs weighed 3.39 grammes.

Ac­cord­ing to ini­tial re­ports, of­fi­cers on an ex­er­cise in the Princes Town dis­trict re­spond­ed to a call at the school. They al­leged­ly ap­proached Do­man in an emp­ty class­room, searched a knap­sack in his pos­ses­sion and found the drugs in a plas­tic bag.

Dur­ing a vir­tu­al hear­ing be­fore Mas­ter Kim­i­tria Gray, Do­man was ob­served re­peat­ed­ly run­ning his hand through his blond hair and lean­ing to­wards the cam­era. Gray asked his at­tor­ney, Petron­il­la Bas­deo, whether she had been able to take in­struc­tions from her client. Bas­deo replied that Do­man had re­cent­ly been dis­charged from a psy­chi­atric ward and re­quest­ed that he be eval­u­at­ed.

Pros­e­cu­tor Ju­lia Bas­deo ten­dered the blue-and-brown knap­sack al­leged­ly con­tain­ing the drugs. The charge was not read to Do­man. In­stead, Gray or­dered that he be tak­en to St Ann’s Psy­chi­atric Hos­pi­tal for eval­u­a­tion from Sep­tem­ber 26 to Oc­to­ber 10.

The hos­pi­tal was in­struct­ed to pre­pare and sub­mit a re­port to the court. Fol­low­ing the eval­u­a­tion, Do­man will be re­mand­ed in prison un­til his next court ap­pear­ance on Oc­to­ber 16.