Derek Achong

Tele­vi­sion per­son­al­i­ty Ian Al­leyne yes­ter­day made a pub­lic ap­peal to friends and fans to as­sist him in help­ing to cov­er the $748,000 debt he in­curred from de­fam­ing busi­ness­man Shaun Sam­my on his Crime Watch pro­gramme last year.

In a video post­ed on his Face­book page hours af­ter High Court mar­shalls and Sam­my's at­tor­neys Om Lal­la and Der­rick Bal­li­ram served a writ of ex­e­cu­tion at his home at Rivulet Road, Cou­va, seiz­ing elec­tron­ic ap­pli­ances and fur­ni­ture, Al­leyne ap­peals to fans for do­na­tions.

"If we have to raise the $748,000 we will raise it. There are peo­ple who will sup­port me, peo­ple will give. We will open up the new stu­dio and I will post the bank ac­count num­ber and even with $20 we would come back out," a teary-eyed Al­leyne said.

The ear­ly morn­ing vis­it to his home kicked off a morn­ing of le­gal woes for Al­leyne who lat­er had a war­rant is­sued for his ar­rest for fail­ing to ap­pear in court for an un­re­lat­ed mat­ter.

Ac­cord­ing to re­ports, as the court staff were still in the process of sift­ing through Al­leyne's be­long­ings, Al­leyne was ap­pear­ing be­fore Se­nior Mag­is­trate Joanne Con­nor in the Ch­agua­nas Mag­is­trates' Court around 9 am for the con­tin­u­a­tion of his case for three crim­i­nal charges aris­ing out of an in­ci­dent at the home of car deal­er Sheron Sukhdeo in Feb­ru­ary.

Al­leyne was charged then with re­sist­ing ar­rest, us­ing an­noy­ing lan­guage and ob­struct­ing a po­lice of­fi­cer, all al­leged­ly dur­ing a con­fronta­tion with his for­mer as­so­ciate turned tele­vi­sion host, In­sp Roger Alexan­der.

Con­nor ini­tial­ly de­layed the hear­ing of Al­leyne's case as she dealt with oth­er cas­es be­fore her but when it was even­tu­al­ly re­called an hour lat­er, Al­leyne was not present.

A search was made of the cour­t­house be­fore Con­nor de­cid­ed to is­sue a war­rant for his ar­rest on the ad­vice of po­lice pros­e­cu­tors.

The mag­is­trate even­tu­al­ly with­drew the war­rant af­ter Al­leyne re­turned to court around noon, apol­o­gised to the court and ex­plained that he had to leave ear­li­er to ad­dress the sit­u­a­tion at his home.

In an­oth­er Face­book post, done af­ter the war­rant was with­drawn, Al­leyne sug­gest­ed the serv­ing of writ of ex­e­cu­tion on the date of his court date was not a co­in­ci­dence. In­di­rect­ly refer­ing to Alexan­der, Al­leyne al­leged: "The said gen­tle­man said last night on tele­vi­sion that I have some­thing to get when I go home. They knew that the court case was to­day and they said let's em­bar­rass Ian."

Al­leyne thanked Con­nor for with­draw­ing the war­rant.

"Thank God good sense pre­vailed and she (Con­nor) un­der­stood what was go­ing on," he said.

While Al­leyne's posts each re­ceived over 1,800 "likes" and at­tract­ed hun­dreds of "shares" and com­ments from so­cial me­dia users, he was al­so crit­i­cised by some, who post­ed pho­tographs of an in­com­plete house at En­deav­or Gar­dens, Ch­agua­nas.

At­tempts to speak to Al­leyne at his new stu­dio at Mon­trose, Ch­agua­nas, which is cur­rent­ly un­der con­struc­tion, were un­suc­cess­ful as one of Al­leyne's em­ploy­ees said he was not there. Sev­er­al calls were placed to his cell­phone but he did not an­swer up to late yes­ter­day.

Le­gal sources told the T&T Guardian that the seized items, which in­clud­ed a tele­vi­sion, stove and re­frig­er­a­tor, will be held in stor­age for a week and would be sold at a pub­lic auc­tion in the event Al­leyne did not clear the debt by then.

Act to em­bar­rass me

With tears run­ning down his face, Al­leyne ac­cused at­tor­ney Om Lal­la of un­fair­ly tar­get­ting him by send­ing bailiffs to his home yes­ter­day.

In an emo­tion­al­ly charged Face­book "Live" video, Al­leyne showed an emp­ty liv­ing room and kitchen af­ter his fur­ni­ture and ap­pli­ances were seized.

Stand­ing bare­foot­ed in the mid­dle of his emp­ty liv­ing room, with his young son hov­ered in and out of the frame, Al­leyne told him to pick up his be­long­ings off the floor. As the young boy asked ques­tions about what items were tak­en from the house, Al­leyne broke down in tears.

He slammed Lal­la for re­fus­ing to give in­to pleas made to stop the levy, say­ing it was meant to em­bar­rass him. He was adamant though he would not be held down by his cir­cum­stances and en­cour­aged his fans to con­tribute to his bank ac­count as he is seek­ing to open his own stu­dio.

On Au­gust 28, his Crime Watch pro­gramme was tak­en off the air af­ter CNC 3 cut ties with him. Al­leyne has con­tin­ued his pro­gramme though, us­ing the Face­book live fea­ture at crime scenes and rack­ing up thou­sands of views.

In a brief in­ter­view with the T&T Guardian yes­ter­day morn­ing, Al­leyne said the prop­er­ty was owned by his par­ents. He said he was not at the house when the levy took place but lat­er in his video he said he, his wife and his son were all asleep when the bailiffs came.

Weigh­ing in on the in­ci­dent yes­ter­day, at­tor­ney Sub­has Pan­day said it seemed as though the levy was on­ly done to em­bar­rass Al­leyne. He said he was doubt­ful the fur­ni­ture and ap­pli­ances which were levied could pay the debt owed by Al­leyne.

Pan­day said, how­ev­er, that it seemed law could not be sep­a­rat­ed from pol­i­tics, adding the for­mer "best buds" had been go­ing at each oth­er for some­time now.