Sascha Wil­son

A Venezue­lan ba­by is dead and his moth­er wound­ed af­ter a Coast Guard ves­sel opened fire on a ves­sel trans­port­ing il­le­gal mi­grants dur­ing an al­ter­ca­tion on the high seas off the south­ern coast on Sat­ur­day night.

While the T&T Coast Guard is claim­ing that its of­fi­cers were act­ing “in self de­fence” af­ter the pirogue rammed in­to their ves­sel, for­mer sen­a­tor and hu­man­i­tar­i­an at­tor­ney Nafes­sa Mo­hammed de­scribed the in­ci­dent as alarm­ing and is call­ing for a full scale in­ves­ti­ga­tion.

The one year-old boy has been iden­ti­fied as Ya Elvis San­toyo while his moth­er has been iden­ti­fied as Darie Elvis Eliag­nis Sara­bia. The names of the oth­er oc­cu­pants on the pirogue were not dis­closed by the Coast Guard up to late Sun­day. How­ev­er, a po­lice source told Guardian Me­dia that the child and his moth­er were among a group of Venezue­lan im­mi­grants, and two Trinida­di­ans aboard the ves­sel.

While the woman was trans­port­ed to the San­gre Grande Hos­pi­tal, the oth­er oc­cu­pants were tak­en in­to po­lice cus­tody. Guardian Me­dia learnt that the moth­er and her son were com­ing to Trinidad to meet their oth­er rel­a­tives in­clud­ing her fa­ther.

Ac­cord­ing to a re­lease from the Coast Guard, the in­ci­dent oc­curred short­ly be­fore mid­night af­ter the TTS Scar­bor­ough de­tect­ed that a ves­sel crossed the bor­der be­tween Trinidad and Venezuela. The pirogue, how­ev­er, at­tempt­ed to evade the Coast Guard ves­sel that had launched its ship’s boat to aid in the in­ter­cep­tion. The re­lease stat­ed: “All avail­able meth­ods were used in­clud­ing the use of the loud hail­er, ship’s horn search­light and flares, to try to get the sus­pect ves­sel to stop, how­ev­er, the ves­sel con­tin­ued to evade TTS Scar­bor­ough.”

The Coast Guard claimed that warn­ing shots were then fired in keep­ing with stan­dard pro­to­cols. How­ev­er, the ves­sel did not stop and the Coast Guard at­tempt­ed to in­ter­cept the pirogue.

Ac­cord­ing to the re­lease, the ves­sel con­tin­ued with “ag­gres­sive ma­noeu­vres, first com­ing in­to con­tact with the ship’s boat and then mak­ing at­tempts to ram it.”

The Coast Guard added they are very fa­mil­iar with the cat­a­stroph­ic re­sults that could oc­cur when ram­ming is used as an eva­sive tech­nique since twice be­fore in the re­cent past Coast Guard in­ter­cep­tors have been rammed by sus­pect ves­sels re­sult­ing in to­tal loss of the in­ter­cep­tor in one in­ci­dent and ma­jor dam­age to the hull and in­te­ri­or of the oth­er in­ter­cep­tor in the sec­ond in­ci­dent.

They said in both in­ci­dents the lives of the in­ter­cep­tor crews were put at risk since they nar­row­ly es­caped ma­jor in­jury and death.

“On this cur­rent oc­ca­sion, the ram­ming ef­fort by the sus­pect ves­sel which was larg­er than the ship’s boat caused its crew to fear for their lives and in self-de­fence, they fired at the en­gines of the sus­pect ves­sel in an at­tempt to bring it to a stop,” the re­lease stat­ed.

When the ves­sel stopped, the Coast Guard crew dis­cov­ered that there were il­le­gal mi­grants on board. They said the oc­cu­pants were hid­ing and were not seen be­fore the ves­sel was stopped.

The re­lease stat­ed that the Coast Guard of­fi­cers ob­served a fe­male il­le­gal mi­grant hold­ing an in­fant and she in­di­cat­ed that she was bleed­ing.

“The ves­sel was im­me­di­ate­ly brought along­side TTS Scar­bor­ough and the in­jured fe­male was sub­se­quent­ly sta­bilised and has since been trans­ferred to a lo­cal health fa­cil­i­ty. Re­gret­tably, the in­fant was found to be un­re­spon­sive.”

Mean­while, the Coast Guard stat­ed that the re­main­ing peo­ple on board the ves­sel would be processed in ac­cor­dance with im­mi­gra­tion and health pro­to­cols.

The Coast Guard ex­tend­ed its sin­cer­est con­do­lences to the fam­i­ly and loved ones of the in­fant and al­so wished the in­jured fe­male a speedy re­cov­ery.

Com­ment­ing on the Coast Guard’s re­lease, Mo­hammed said, “It is a most alarm­ing sit­u­a­tion that I think re­quires an im­me­di­ate in­ves­ti­ga­tion and be­cause it in­volves na­tion­als from out neigh­bour­ing coun­try Venezuela I be­lieve there should be in the in­ter­est of fair­ness and jus­tice there should be some kind of joint in­ter­ven­tion in terms of hav­ing of­fi­cials from both coun­tries in­ves­ti­gate this mat­ter thor­ough­ly and prop­er­ly. It is un­be­liev­able.”

While she is not con­don­ing il­le­gal en­try, Mo­hammed said there needs to be ad­di­tion­al mea­sures to en­sure there is a bal­anc­ing act be­tween law en­force­ment and the hu­man­i­tar­i­an con­sid­er­a­tions in­volved. “In this par­tic­u­lar case with the death of a ba­by from an­oth­er coun­try, I think it is on­ly fear that the diplo­mat­ic ser­vice get in­to ac­tion im­me­di­ate­ly to deal with this mat­ter in the in­ter­est of fair­ness and jus­tice.”

Call­ing on the Venezue­lan Em­bassy to get in­volved, she said law en­force­ment of­fi­cers must be prop­er­ly trained.

“We talk­ing about a pirogue try­ing to ram in­to a brand new Coast Guard ves­sel, which is a huge ves­sel out at the sea, come on man. Let’s be re­al, let’s get the truth in this mat­ter please,” she said.

Ex­press­ing con­do­lences to the ba­by’s fam­i­ly, she was hope­ful that of­fi­cials will en­sure that the suf­fer­ing of the fam­i­ly will be min­i­mized.

Mean­while, the Coast Guard is al­so in­ves­ti­gat­ing an in­ci­dent at the San Fer­nan­do Yacht Club where one of its ves­sels sank on Sat­ur­day.

The 28-foot pirogue was equipped with a 200-HP en­gine to­geth­er with all the ac­ces­sories for pa­trolling the Gulf of Paria.

There were no Coast Guard of­fi­cers at the base when the ves­sel sank. The es­ti­mat­ed cost of the ves­sel is over $250,000.