While the Trinidad and To­ba­go Po­lice Ser­vice (TTPS) is not link­ing the mur­der of An­drea Lal­lan, 13, of Rio Claro, to a sex­u­al as­sault al­le­ga­tion, it is­sued a me­dia state­ment telling of a Rio Claro cou­ple who ap­peared vir­tu­al­ly be­fore the Rio Claro Mag­is­trates’ Court yes­ter­day, joint­ly charged with two counts of sex­u­al pen­e­tra­tion of a 13-year-old girl.

Lal­lan and a male rel­a­tive were shot dead at their home at Old Ma­yaro Road, Lib­er­tyville, Rio Claro, ear­ly yes­ter­day.

In a me­dia re­lease, the TTPS said the ac­cused, a 23-year-old woman and a 49-year-old man, were charged on Thurs­day by WPC Far­ri­er, of the Rio Claro Crim­i­nal In­ves­ti­ga­tions De­part­ment (CID), fol­low­ing a Sep­tem­ber 15 po­lice re­port of the al­leged acts.

The TTPS said the woman, a house clean­er, was grant­ed $500,000 bail while the man, a con­trac­tor, was de­nied bail by Mag­is­trate Ava Van­den­berg-Bai­ley. They are ex­pect­ed to an­swer the charges on Oc­to­ber 27.

Ac­cord­ing to a po­lice re­port, at 3.15 pm on Sep­tem­ber 15, the girl was asleep at the home of the man and his girl­friend when she was al­leged­ly awak­ened by them.

The girl told de­tec­tives that the cou­ple al­leged­ly sex­u­al­ly as­sault­ed her. The cou­ple is al­so al­leged to have threat­ened to kill her if she re­port­ed the mat­ter to any­one.

The girl, in com­pa­ny with her fa­ther, sub­se­quent­ly made a re­port to the Rio Claro Po­lice Sta­tion.

The TTPS said the in­ves­ti­ga­tion, which al­so in­clud­ed WPC O’Con­nor un­der the su­per­vi­sion of Sgt Ma­haraj, cul­mi­nat­ed with the sus­pects be­ing charged with the of­fences.