Stephon Nicholas

To­ba­go Cor­re­spon­dent

The To­ba­go House of As­sem­bly (THA) has been giv­en un­til Sep­tem­ber 9 to reach an am­i­ca­ble set­tle­ment over the trag­ic death of sev­en-year-old An­gel­i­ca Jo­gie at Pi­geon Point beach on April 8.

The for­mer San Fer­nan­do TML stu­dent was on va­ca­tion with rel­a­tives at the pop­u­lar beach when a jet ski breached the bathing-on­ly zone and crashed in­to her and her par­ents. She was pro­nounced dead at Scar­bor­ough Gen­er­al Hos­pi­tal.

On Ju­ly 15, Free­dom Law Cham­bers, rep­re­sent­ing the Jo­gie fam­i­ly, sent a pre-ac­tion pro­to­col let­ter to the THA, al­leg­ing that An­gel­i­ca’s death was caused by neg­li­gence and breach of du­ty. It al­leged that the THA knew there was a risk to the safe­ty of bathers but failed to take suf­fi­cient steps to ad­dress those con­cerns.

The Jo­gie fam­i­ly is seek­ing dam­ages for wrong­ful death, loss of earn­ings, loss of ameni­ty and spe­cial dam­ages.

Oth­er de­fen­dants named in the claim in­clude Pi­geon Point Her­itage Park and Ash­worth Bur­nett, the 33-year-old jet ski op­er­a­tor who is cur­rent­ly charged with manslaugh­ter over An­gel­i­ca’s death. Bur­nett ap­peared in court on Ju­ly 29 and was de­nied bail.

The par­ties were giv­en 28 days to re­spond to the claim, in­di­cat­ing whether they ac­cept­ed li­a­bil­i­ty for An­gel­i­ca’s death.

How­ev­er, on Au­gust 11, the THA replied to the Jo­gies’ at­tor­neys, re­quest­ing an ex­ten­sion.

In an Au­gust 14 re­ply, the fam­i­ly’s at­tor­neys grant­ed the THA’s re­quest in the hope that the mat­ter can be “am­i­ca­bly re­solved”. They al­so praised Chief Sec­re­tary Far­ley Au­gus­tine for his “no-non­sense ap­proach” to the mat­ter and his em­pa­thy to­wards the fam­i­ly, say­ing this had been deeply mean­ing­ful and “brought much hope and com­fort to our clients” as they con­tin­ue to grieve.

The at­tor­neys al­so not­ed Au­gus­tine’s com­ments about al­leged law­less­ness tak­ing place in the ma­rine park.

“They al­so took com­fort from the Ho­n­ourable Chief Sec­re­tary’s forth­right state­ments that ‘there must be or­der in the space, it can­not be a free for all’ and that ‘dan­ger has been al­lowed to co­ex­ist with recre­ation for far too long.’”

How­ev­er, the at­tor­neys warned that if the Sep­tem­ber 9 dead­line pass­es with­out a res­o­lu­tion, le­gal pro­ceed­ings will be filed with­out fur­ther no­tice.

At a ple­nary sit­ting on April 23, Au­gus­tine chas­tised po­lice for not en­forc­ing reg­u­la­tions at the ma­rine park, warn­ing that the THA would sue the Cen­tral Gov­ern­ment if it faced a law­suit over in­ci­dents there.

In 2010, the THA was found li­able for a 2007 boat­ing ac­ci­dent at Pi­geon Point that left a teenag­er paral­ysed and his girl­friend bad­ly in­jured.