Stephon Nicholas

To­ba­go Cor­re­spon­dent

The le­gal bat­tle over the trag­ic death of sev­en-year-old An­gel­i­ca Jo­gie in To­ba­go is head­ing to court.

Guardian Me­dia un­der­stands that no one has ac­cept­ed li­a­bil­i­ty for the jet ski breach­ing the bathing-on­ly zone at Pi­geon Point beach on April 8 and crash­ing in­to An­gel­i­ca and her fam­i­ly. The for­mer San Fer­nan­do TML stu­dent was tak­en to Scar­bor­ough Gen­er­al Hos­pi­tal, where she was pro­nounced dead.

On Ju­ly 15, at­tor­neys rep­re­sent­ing the Jo­gie fam­i­ly sent a pre-ac­tion pro­to­col let­ter to the To­ba­go House of As­sem­bly (THA), Pi­geon Point Her­itage Park and the al­leged jet ski op­er­a­tor. The let­ter claimed An­gel­i­ca’s death was pre­ventable and re­sult­ed from neg­li­gence and breach of du­ty by the de­fen­dants.

The Jo­gies are su­ing for An­gel­i­ca’s wrong­ful death, pain and suf­fer­ing, loss of earn­ings, loss of ameni­ty and spe­cial dam­ages.

A re­li­able source con­firmed to Guardian Me­dia yes­ter­day that none of the par­ties had re­spond­ed to the pre-ac­tion let­ter.

Free­dom Law Cham­bers, which is rep­re­sent­ing the Jo­gies, is now prepar­ing to file the pa­pers to seek re­dress in court.

Re­spond­ing to ques­tions yes­ter­day about the THA’s po­si­tion on li­a­bil­i­ty, Sec­re­tary of Le­gal Af­fairs Ad­han­na Joseph-Wal­lace said, “I would pre­fer to al­low mat­ters to take their nat­ur­al course and re­serve judg­ment at this time.”

On Ju­ly 27, 33-year-old jet ski op­er­a­tor Ash­worth Bur­nett of Canaan was charged with manslaugh­ter in con­nec­tion with An­gel­i­ca’s death. Bur­nett al­leged­ly fled the scene af­ter the in­ci­dent and was ar­rest­ed hours lat­er at his home. He was lat­er re­leased pend­ing fur­ther in­quiries and re­ar­rest­ed on the ad­vice of the Di­rec­tor of Pub­lic Pros­e­cu­tions (DPP).

In an in­ter­view with Guardian Me­dia last month, Green To­ba­go Tours CEO Leroy George praised the Jo­gies for tak­ing le­gal ac­tion, say­ing he wished to see the court dis­sect the in­ci­dent lay­er by lay­er to iden­ti­fy po­ten­tial safe­ty gaps with­in the in­dus­try.

While ac­knowl­edg­ing the pain of re­liv­ing the in­ci­dent in court, George said scruti­ny of in­dus­try prac­tices was nec­es­sary to en­sure stake­hold­ers learn from their mis­takes.

The case is not the first mar­itime safe­ty in­ci­dent in To­ba­go to re­quire court in­ter­ven­tion.

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