Rhon­dor Dowlat-Ros­tant

Five Trinida­di­an men and six Venezue­lan na­tion­als yes­ter­day ap­peared in court charged un­der the Pub­lic Health [2019 Nov­el Coro­n­avirus (2019-nCoV)] (No. 9) Reg­u­la­tions, 2020, af­ter be­ing held while by po­lice while at­tend­ing a COVID par­ty.

Trinida­di­ans Bruce Bowen and Do­minic Suraj, both of Mar­aval, Christo­pher Wil­son, of Bel­mont, Collin Ramjohn, of Point Cumana and Mar­lon Hinds, of Diego Mar­tin, were among 16 peo­ple held dur­ing an op­er­a­tion con­duct­ed by the Spe­cial Op­er­a­tions Re­sponse Team (SORT) at Ali­cia’s Guest House, St Ann’s, last Fri­day. The raid was led by Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice Gary Grif­fith.

Venezue­lan na­tion­als Luz Mari­navar­gas Ibar­ra, Dana Fuentes Mu­dar­ra, Gre­sel Goncalez, Yu­lan­gi Del Car­men Pros­pertt Ar­ray, Luis­nei­dis Mari­no and Mar­i­an­gel Del Valle Lopez Ramos were al­so among those held at the lo­ca­tion.

The 11 sus­pects were sub­se­quent­ly charged with the of­fence of gath­er­ing in a pub­lic place where the num­ber of peo­ple gath­ered ex­ceed­ed five.

They all ap­peared be­fore Port-of-Spain Mag­is­trate Adia Mo­hammed via video con­fer­enc­ing yes­ter­day.

The Trinida­di­an men were grant­ed own bail in the sum of $20,000 each on the con­di­tion that they re­main at their res­i­dences be­tween 6 pm and 8 am un­til the COVID-19 re­stric­tions lift­ed. The non-na­tion­als were de­nied bail and re­mand­ed in­to cus­tody.