KEVON FELMINE

Se­nior Re­porter

kevon.felmine@guardian.co.tt

The fu­ner­al ser­vice for sev­en-year-old An­gel­i­ca Saydee Jo­gie will be held on Sat­ur­day in Bar­rack­pore, af­ter her body re­turns home for the fi­nal time fol­low­ing a trag­ic jet ski in­ci­dent in To­ba­go.

The ser­vice is sched­uled for 9 am, with the fam­i­ly con­firm­ing it will be streamed live on YouTube. It will be fol­lowed by cre­ma­tion at the Shore of Peace, Mos­qui­to Creek.

An­gel­i­ca died last week while on a fam­i­ly trip to To­ba­go. Ac­cord­ing to re­ports, she was bathing with rel­a­tives at Pi­geon Point Her­itage Park when a jet ski en­tered a des­ig­nat­ed swim­ming area and struck sev­er­al mem­bers of her fam­i­ly.

The child was in the wa­ter with her par­ents and oth­er rel­a­tives when the ves­sel re­port­ed­ly crossed in­to a rope-marked bathing zone, hit­ting her and in­jur­ing oth­ers, in­clud­ing her par­ents and an un­cle. She suf­fered se­vere head and trau­mat­ic in­juries and was pro­nounced dead at the Scar­bor­ough Gen­er­al Hos­pi­tal. Her rel­a­tives were al­so treat­ed for in­juries.

Po­lice said the jet ski op­er­a­tor fled the scene im­me­di­ate­ly af­ter the col­li­sion, trig­ger­ing a search that end­ed hours lat­er when he was lo­cat­ed and de­tained at his home in Canaan, To­ba­go. The jet ski in­volved in the in­ci­dent was al­so im­pound­ed.

In­ves­ti­ga­tors have de­scribed the case as a com­plex mar­itime safe­ty mat­ter, with of­fi­cers con­tin­u­ing to in­ter­view wit­ness­es and ex­am­ine how the wa­ter­craft en­tered a re­strict­ed bathing area. Find­ings are ex­pect­ed to be sent to the Di­rec­tor of Pub­lic Pros­e­cu­tions once the in­ves­ti­ga­tion is com­plete.

Fol­low­ing the tragedy, the To­ba­go House of As­sem­bly (THA) tem­porar­i­ly re­strict­ed ac­cess at parts of Pi­geon Point for safe­ty checks. The area has since re­opened with height­ened life­guard and po­lice pres­ence, and au­thor­i­ties con­firmed that jet ski ac­tiv­i­ty was sus­pend­ed im­me­di­ate­ly af­ter the in­ci­dent as en­force­ment was tight­ened.