Gail Alexan­der

The fu­ner­al of slain se­nior coun­sel Dana See­ta­hal will take place at 5 pm on Thurs­day at Ara­malaya Pres­by­ter­ian Church, Tu­na­puna.She was killed ear­ly last Sun­day morn­ing when she was am­bushed by gun­men on Hamil­ton-Hold­er Street, Wood­brook. She would have been 59 on Ju­ly 8.See­ta­hal had been re­turn­ing to her One Wood­brook Place apart­ment when the ap­par­ent as­sas­si­na­tion oc­curred. She sus­tained bul­let wounds to her head and up­per body from an es­ti­mat­ed 12 gun­shots. A $1 mil­lion re­ward is be­ing of­fered for in­for­ma­tion on the in­ci­dent.

News of her mur­der has been spot­light­ed up and down the re­gion and in­ter­na­tion­al­ly.See­ta­hal, a leg­endary fig­ure in the le­gal fra­ter­ni­ty, was a for­mer State pros­e­cu­tor, as­sis­tant so­lic­i­tor gen­er­al and a mag­is­trate. She was al­so a for­mer In­de­pen­dent sen­a­tor, She­See­ta­hal was the daugh­ter of Latch­man Sa­roop See­ta­hal and Sar­judeya Sa­roop See­ta­hal (for­mer­ly Ram­subeik).

Her sib­lings in­clud­ed broth­ers Hay­man, Lenny, Ken­rick, Omar and Ray­mond and sis­ters Cyn­thia (Rosey), Elaine, Amelia, Mar­i­lyn (See­ta) and Su­san.She was the sis­ter-in-law of Dr Ran­dolph Teemul, Roodal Per­sad, Moonie See­ta­hal and Hazel Ann See­ta­hal.

See­ta­hal was al­so the aunt of Rurik, Trevor, An­tal, Dave, Shiv­anan, Sathyam, Shiv­am, Lendl, Philippe, Ro­ma, Ja­nine, Melis­sa, Danielle and Lean­na.Last night, rel­a­tives be­gan night­ly wake ser­vices at the fam­i­ly home at 24 Wilkin­son Street, El Do­ra­do Vil­lage, Tu­na­puna.Those ex­pect­ed to at­tend in­clud­ed See­ta­hal's col­league of many years, Is­rael Khan, SC, her fel­low pros­e­cu­tor on her last case, the Vin­dra Naipaul-Cool­man mur­der tri­al.The wakes will con­tin­ue from 7 pm tonight and to­mor­row night.For Thurs­day's fu­ner­al, the cortege will leave Wilkin­son Street for the Ara­malaya Pres­by­ter­ian Church on Cochrane Street, Tu­na­puna, for the ser­vice.

A church spokesman said yes­ter­day See­ta­hal had grown up in the church and had once been its youth group leader and as­sist­ed with oth­er church work.The church is a block off the East­ern Main Road, Tu­na­puna, be­tween Fran­cis and Freel­ing Streets. It has seat­ing for 400 and park­ing for 200.Ad­di­tion­al seats and park­ing near­by are ex­pect­ed to be arranged for the fu­ner­al, which will at­tract a huge turnout, not on­ly from the le­gal and po­lit­i­cal fra­ter­ni­ty but peo­ple from many oth­er spheres.Af­ter the fu­ner­al, she will be cre­mat­ed at Bel­grove's Cre­ma­to­ri­um, 10 Or­ange Grove Road, Tacarigua.Yes­ter­day, staffers from her El Do­ra­do cham­bers on up­per St Vin­cent Street, Port-of-Spain, turned out to work de­spite the mur­der of their boss. Tear­ing up as they spoke about her, they said See­ta­hal would have want­ed them to car­ry on and en­sure every­thing was in or­der.