Po­lice are try­ing to de­ter­mine if 100 peo­ple, who were on board the plea­sure boat, the Ocean Pel­i­can in Ch­aguara­mas for a Box­ing Day event called “Sea­side Brunch” com­mit­ted any breach of the Pub­lic Health Reg­u­la­tions.

The group, which in­clud­ed the ves­sel’s own­er, was ques­tioned by po­lice and lat­er re­leased on Sun­day night. The or­gan­is­er of the event is said to be the son of a Gov­ern­ment Min­is­ter. Ac­cord­ing to a re­lease from the Trinidad and To­ba­go Po­lice Ser­vice, be­tween 5.30 pm and 9.30 pm on Sun­day, of­fi­cers were told there was an event tak­ing place on the ves­sel, which was an­chored in the vicin­i­ty of the An­chor­age.

“A check of the ves­sel Ocean Pel­i­can re­vealed there were 100 peo­ple on board in­clud­ing the boat’s own­er. They were all de­tained, processed, and re­leased,” the re­lease stat­ed.

Po­lice said they have since con­sult­ed with the Of­fice of the Di­rec­tor of Pub­lic Pros­e­cu­tions (DPP) to de­ter­mine whether there were any breach­es of the Pub­lic Health Reg­u­la­tions.

“In the event that they were, these per­sons will be pro­ceed­ed against by means of sum­mons,” the re­lease stat­ed. The Pub­lic Health Reg­u­la­tions states: “4.(1) For the pur­pos­es of con­trol­ling and pre­vent­ing the spread of the 2019 Nov­el Coro­n­avirus (2019-nCoV), it shall be an of­fence, dur­ing the pe­ri­od spec­i­fied in reg­u­la­tion 19, for any per­son to–

(a) be found at or in any riv­er, stream, pond, spring or sim­i­lar body of wa­ter, any pub­lic pool or mud vol­cano or mud pools for recre­ation­al pur­pos­es; (b) op­er­ate a par­ty boat, boat tour or night­club;”

Gath­er­ings in ex­cess of ten peo­ple are pro­hib­it­ed. With­in hours of the videos of po­lice of­fi­cers in­struct­ing the par­ty­go­ers to line up out­side the ves­sel on Sun­day night be­ing post­ed to so­cial me­dia, ru­mours sur­faced that the event was held by the son of Gov­ern­ment Min­is­ter Paula Gopee-Scoon.

Guardian Me­dia Lim­it­ed con­tact­ed Gopee-Scoon and while she did not de­ny that the per­son named was her son, she said she had no com­ment to make.

Guardian Me­dia al­so con­tact­ed Adri­an Scoon, who was said to be the or­gan­is­er of the event. He too said he had no com­ment to make.

Asked how he felt about state­ments from the po­lice that par­ty­go­ers could be charged by sum­mons, Scoon said, “I have to let them do their job.”

He de­clined to com­ment any fur­ther.

When con­tact­ed for com­ment, spokesper­son for the Plea­sure Boat As­so­ci­a­tion, Stephan Mc Comie said he was un­sure of the de­tails of the in­ci­dent.

“It was an ex­er­cise car­ried out by Care­nage Po­lice Sta­tion with re­spect to a breach of the Pub­lic Health Or­di­nance be­cause the Pel­i­can is not con­sid­ered a safe zone so there was a mis­un­der­stand­ing there, with­in the agree­ment to rent the boat at the point in time,” Mc Comie said.

Mc Comie said the ves­sel did not leave the mariner but re­mained docked through­out the event. He said the ves­sel has a spe­cial restau­rant li­cense but it is not a safe zone. Mc Comie said the As­so­ci­a­tion would meet to­day (Tues­day) to fur­ther dis­cuss this in­ci­dent. Guardian Me­dia al­so reached out to Health Min­is­ter Ter­rence Deyals­ingh for com­ment, but there was no re­sponse to What­sApp mes­sages sent to his phone. Ef­forts were made to con­tact act­ing Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er Mc Don­ald Ja­cob, how­ev­er, he did not an­swer his phone.