Fol­low­ing the trag­ic elec­tro­cu­tion of 18-year-old Kaya Archibald in Point Fortin, au­thor­i­ties in­clud­ing Her­itage Pe­tro­le­um, T&TEC (Trinidad and To­ba­go Elec­tric­i­ty Com­mis­sion), and the po­lice are in­ves­ti­gat­ing the pro­lif­er­a­tion of il­le­gal elec­tri­cal con­nec­tions with­in a squat­ting com­mu­ni­ty ad­ja­cent to Tenth Street, Techi­er Vil­lage, Ex­ten­sion.

Archibald was dis­cov­ered un­re­spon­sive by her moth­er, Mar­sha Kerr, around 11 pm on Sat­ur­day, at their home. De­spite ef­forts to pro­vide med­ical at­ten­tion, Archibald was pro­nounced dead up­on her ar­rival at the Point Fortin Area Hos­pi­tal.

In an in­ter­view with the me­dia, in the area where the in­ci­dent oc­curred, Fran­cis Daniel, al­so known as Sis­co, ad­mit­ted that il­le­gal con­nec­tions were ram­pant.

“The cur­rent you see down here is for a tank and a pump. Down here, the cur­rent goes too high when they are drilling. T&TEC, Petrotrin, every­body knows that. There is no reg­u­lat­ed cur­rent. Every­body down here try­ing to help them­selves,” Daniel said.

He ac­knowl­edged the preva­lence of il­le­gal con­nec­tions, em­pha­sis­ing that the en­tire com­mu­ni­ty en­gaged in self-help due to the ab­sence of prop­er in­fra­struc­ture.

Re­count­ing the events lead­ing to Archibald’s elec­tro­cu­tion, Daniel ex­plained, “She (Archibald) was try­ing to fix some­thing in the elec­tric­i­ty. Every­body here does that. She was try­ing to fix it. It wasn’t work­ing and she was try­ing to fix it. When the cur­rent on the line, it comes high and low.”

He said that Archibald in­tend­ed to con­nect a wire to a plug to ac­cess pow­er.

Guardian Me­dia at­tempt­ed to speak with Archibald’s moth­er for com­ment but was pre­vent­ed from do­ing so by an ag­gres­sive woman in a red dress, who was hold­ing stones. She threat­ened the me­dia but was held back by an­oth­er rel­a­tive.

Re­ports ob­tained by Guardian Me­dia from both T&TEC and Her­itage Pe­tro­le­um ver­i­fied the pres­ence of il­le­gal con­nec­tions at the house. T&TEC’s re­port in­di­cat­ed an ab­sence of an au­tho­rised sup­ply, high­light­ing the use of an unau­tho­rised ex­ten­sion cord from Her­itage to sup­ply the premis­es. The re­port stat­ed that an il­le­gal ca­ble re­mained en­er­gised across the road­way.

Her­itage Pe­tro­le­um al­so con­firmed that height­ened se­cu­ri­ty mea­sures were nec­es­sary as its crew con­duct­ed in­ves­ti­ga­tions in the area.

In a state­ment, the com­pa­ny ex­pressed con­do­lences to the be­reaved fam­i­ly while reaf­firm­ing its on­go­ing pub­lic aware­ness cam­paign. The cam­paign aims to com­mu­ni­cate the haz­ards of il­le­gal con­nec­tions, un­der­scor­ing the po­ten­tial risks to lives and the broad­er com­mu­ni­ty.

Po­lice said an au­top­sy would be done on Kaya’s body on Mon­day to de­ter­mine the cause of death.