Shane Su­perville

Se­nior Re­porter

shane.su­perville@guardian.co.tt

As in­ves­ti­ga­tions con­tin­ue in­to the cir­cum­stances sur­round­ing Sun­day evening’s head-on col­li­sion be­tween two boats at Can­nings Point, Ch­aguara­mas, Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er Al­lis­ter Gue­var­ro has as­sured the pub­lic that the mat­ter is be­ing treat­ed with the nec­es­sary se­ri­ous­ness.

Gue­var­ro said that while in­ves­ti­ga­tors could not dis­close de­tails of the probe, the Di­rec­tor of Pub­lic Pros­e­cu­tions would make the fi­nal de­ter­mi­na­tion on whether there was any crim­i­nal li­a­bil­i­ty.

He ad­dressed the in­ci­dent dur­ing his open­ing re­marks at a TTPS me­dia brief­ing at the Po­lice Ad­min­is­tra­tion Build­ing on Sackville Street, Port-of-Spain, yes­ter­day. He al­so urged any­one with in­for­ma­tion to come for­ward and as­sist the po­lice.

“I am ask­ing all per­sons who have any in­for­ma­tion as it re­lates to this hor­ri­ble ac­ci­dent to come for­ward,” he said.

“Some­one may have a video, some­one may have wit­nessed some­thing be­fore or even af­ter the ac­ci­dent that can as­sist us in putting the pieces to­geth­er.”

Asked whether the in­ci­dent could in­volve crim­i­nal li­a­bil­i­ty, Gue­var­ro said a de­ter­mi­na­tion could be made on­ly af­ter all the ev­i­dence had been gath­ered.

“The on­ly way we will be able to make that de­ter­mi­na­tion is when we gath­er all the ev­i­dence and we take it to that au­gust body called the of­fice of the Di­rec­tor of Pub­lic Pros­e­cu­tions and he would be able to guide, ad­vise and pro­nounce on whether or not crim­i­nal­i­ty is in­volved so I don’t want to pre­sume that the DPP may make a judge­ment that doesn’t go with what we think at this point in time.”

He urged the pub­lic to al­low in­ves­ti­ga­tors to do their jobs and let the “fact-find­ing process” take its course.

Hours lat­er, dur­ing an Op­po­si­tion me­dia brief­ing, for­mer at­tor­ney gen­er­al Faris Al-Rawi con­firmed that he had been re­tained to rep­re­sent the fam­i­ly of pas­sen­gers aboard the Bam­ba­leo, a 28-foot Bowen plea­sure craft.

Al-Rawi de­nied so­cial me­dia claims that a child was pi­lot­ing the ves­sel at the time of the col­li­sion.

“There is ab­solute­ly no truth to the in­volve­ment of any mi­nor con­duct­ing any boat. That is just com­plete­ly un­true.”

He al­so cau­tioned the pub­lic against mak­ing al­le­ga­tions about chil­dren or us­ing im­ages of mi­nors.

“At­tack­ing chil­dren on al­le­ga­tions is an of­fence when they cross cer­tain lines,” he said.

“You may not know this, but us­ing the im­ages of mi­nors is not some­thing you’re al­lowed to do and with­out very strict cau­tions. It’s not of­ten I would do this, but I want to tell you cat­e­gor­i­cal­ly that there was no mi­nor in­volved in this in­ci­dent.”

Al-Rawi said his clients had giv­en state­ments to the po­lice and helped peo­ple af­fect­ed at the crash site. He added that the fam­i­ly had joined the fam­i­lies of the miss­ing pas­sen­gers in search­ing for their loved ones.

Fa­ther grieves loss of two sons months apart

Mar­lon Oliv­er, the fa­ther of Loren­zo Oliv­er, one of the miss­ing pas­sen­gers aboard the Bel­ba­gai, said the in­ci­dent was par­tic­u­lar­ly heart­break­ing be­cause he had lost a sec­ond son with­in months.

Speak­ing with Guardian Me­dia at the fam­i­ly’s home on Spar­row Dri­ve, Pe­tit Val­ley, Oliv­er said he was still wait­ing for up­dates on whether his son’s re­mains had been found.

He was still griev­ing the death of his oth­er son, Jerome Oliv­er, who was shot and killed in the neigh­bour­hood in Feb­ru­ary, when the lat­est tragedy un­fold­ed.

“So this is two sons I have to bury for this year and I can’t even say I have to bury one of them be­cause they ain’t find my first­born (Loren­zo) to say well for cer­tain I can bury him, he’s still out at sea, he’s lost.”

Jerome was cre­mat­ed, Oliv­er said, and his ash­es were scat­tered in Ch­aguara­mas, near the spot where his broth­er was in­volved in the boat­ing ac­ci­dent.

Oliv­er said he did not want to di­min­ish the hopes of the fam­i­lies of the oth­er miss­ing pas­sen­gers. How­ev­er, he was re­al­is­tic about his son’s chances of sur­viv­ing the col­li­sion. He said the part-time DJ would have done every­thing he could to reach safe­ty for the sake of his eight-year-old daugh­ter, if he had sur­vived the im­pact.

“If my son was alive, he would have giv­en his all to show him­self.

“He love his daugh­ter more than life it­self, every­thing he do was for his daugh­ter... not for me or even for life, he would have made sure of that for his daugh­ter.”

De­fence Min­is­ter Wayne Sturge, re­spond­ing to ques­tions from Guardian Me­dia Ltd via What­sApp through a min­istry spokesper­son, said he was pleased with the Coast Guard’s re­sponse to the ac­ci­dent.

Asked whether he had a mes­sage for the fam­i­lies of the miss­ing peo­ple, Sturge said, “The mat­ter is now a po­lice mat­ter, as a re­sult the less said the bet­ter.”

Oliv­er said he had hoped the au­thor­i­ties would have re­spond­ed with greater ur­gency. While grate­ful for the res­cue ef­forts by the pro­tec­tive ser­vices, he said more re­sources should have been mo­bilised to give the fam­i­lies clo­sure.

“For Trinidad, I find this is fail­ure, be­cause I can’t go out on the sea to look for my son.

“If a boat sink in Port-of-Spain, is this the kind of re­sponse we coun­try giv­ing the peo­ple of Trinidad? So if any­thing hap­pens, we just have to take it and bury we fam­i­ly.”

Guardian Me­dia al­so vis­it­ed Pt Cumana, Care­nage, where Leah Bris­tol, the aunt of miss­ing 17-year-old Kieyan­na Seechan, said she hoped a fair and un­bi­ased in­ves­ti­ga­tion would be con­duct­ed.

“I’m hop­ing that who­ev­er was re­spon­si­ble is held ac­count­able for jus­tice... what­ev­er that may look like, but that’s the best out­come I can hope for.

“We know there are wit­ness­es; there were some peo­ple who were in­jured but were co­her­ent enough to speak with us, so we did hear things but we are not the TTPS so we don’t want to cast any as­per­sions.”

Bris­tol said Kieyan­na’s fa­ther, her broth­er-in-law Mar­cus Seechan, re­mained in crit­i­cal con­di­tion at hos­pi­tal and was un­con­scious as of Wednes­day morn­ing.

The fam­i­ly had not yet dis­cussed how they would tell him about Kieyan­na’s dis­ap­pear­ance when he re­gained con­scious­ness, she said.

“We know that is some­thing that will be a chal­lenge, but right now we are try­ing to fo­cus on him re­cov­er­ing and af­ter that we will treat with that ac­cord­ing­ly.”

On Tues­day, the Par­ent-Teacher As­so­ci­a­tion and prin­ci­pal of St Pe­ter’s RC Pri­ma­ry School in Pt Cumana, Care­nage, host­ed a can­dle­light vig­il for Kieyan­na, who at­tend­ed the school as a child and lat­er worked there as an On-the-Job trainee.

Crowds of res­i­dents and for­mer school­mates at­tend­ed the vig­il and prayed for her safe re­turn.

The school’s prin­ci­pal, Trudy Dol­land-Nep­tune, told Guardian Me­dia that the in­ci­dent was par­tic­u­lar­ly painful be­cause Kieyan­na was a for­mer stu­dent and staff mem­ber. Some of the younger stu­dents cried af­ter hear­ing that she was miss­ing, she said.

Coast Guard seeks to ver­i­fy pos­si­ble sixth pas­sen­ger

In a me­dia re­lease on Tues­day, the Trinidad and To­ba­go Coast Guard said it was aware of so­cial me­dia re­ports that a pre­vi­ous­ly uniden­ti­fied sixth per­son may have been aboard the Bel­ba­gai at the time of the col­li­sion.

The Coast Guard said it was seek­ing to ver­i­fy the in­for­ma­tion with the rel­e­vant au­thor­i­ties as search and re­cov­ery ef­forts con­tin­ued on Wednes­day.

“Any con­firmed change to the num­ber of per­sons un­ac­count­ed for will be com­mu­ni­cat­ed once ver­i­fi­ca­tion is com­plete.”