Sascha Wil­son

One of the Trinida­di­ans who was aboard the fish­ing ves­sel when the T&T Coast Guard opened fire on it, killing a Venezue­lan ba­by who was in his moth­er’s arms, is re­fut­ing the events as giv­en by the Coast Guard.

In an in­ter­view at the Princes Town of­fice of his at­tor­ney Petron­il­la Bas­deo yes­ter­day, the 31-year-old fish­er­man, who asked to re­main anony­mous, de­nied the claim that their pirogue rammed the Coast Guard ves­sel, adding they al­so did noth­ing to war­rant the Coast Guard shoot­ing at their ves­sel.

He ex­plained that he, an­oth­er Trinida­di­an and the boat cap­tain, a Span­ish na­tion­al, had gone fish­ing off Moru­ga around 5 or 6 pm on Feb­ru­ary 5 and they saw a boat look­ing like it was in dif­fi­cul­ty. He said it took more than 30 min­utes to reach the ves­sel and the cap­tain spoke with them and they asked for their help to get to land. He claimed they trans­ferred the peo­ple, who had en­tered T&T wa­ters il­le­gal­ly, on­to their boat and when they were about 15 min­utes away from shore, they en­coun­tered the Coast Guard.

“We saw this boat, it didn’t have no lights or any­thing. We saw a flare. We didn’t know if was ban­dit or if was Coast Guard,” he said.

“The first flare they sent up, we heard sev­er­al gun­shots. I was re­al­ly fright­en. They sent up a next flare with sev­er­al gun­shots still. Af­ter the sec­ond flare they sent up a third one where they put on a light on their boat say­ing it’s Coast Guard, stop.”

He said they stopped the boat but it was still sail­ing slow­ly.

De­scrib­ing the in­ci­dent as trau­mat­ic and fright­en­ing, he said he then saw ba­by Yaelvis San­toyo Sara­bia and his moth­er Dairelvis Sara­bia bleed­ing.

“When I see she raise up, I watch the ba­by and I see a big hole in the ba­by head. She was cry­ing. She was in blood. I get re­al fright­en.”

He said the Coast Guard of­fi­cers, who were wear­ing ski masks, ap­proached the ves­sel in two small­er boats and they point­ed guns at them, “curs­ing ask­ing for drugs and guns.”

“We telling them look a ba­by die on the boat here and he moth­er get shoot. I have noth­ing like no drugs and no guns. They start quar­relling with us. The big boat come up to us. They take off all the Span­ish peo­ple and the chil­dren off our boat, put them on the big Coast Guard boat, leav­ing me, my friend and the cap­tain with the dead ba­by on the boat and two Coast Guards.”

He said the of­fi­cers told the oth­er Trinida­di­an to car­ry the dead ba­by to the front of the boat.

“Af­ter they called out to me to go up in front an raise up the ba­by and pray for this ba­by so I did what they say be­cause I was very fright­en,” the fish­er­man said.

He said the of­fi­cers then told him to put the ba­by back on the ground and to take off their clothes. When they al­most go to shore, he said the of­fi­cers told them to cov­er the ba­by with a blan­ket.

He said they got to the Ma­yaro Coast Guard base around 4 am and re­mained there un­til 2.30 pm. They were then tak­en to the Ma­yaro Po­lice Sta­tion and some­time lat­er they were put on a bus with the Venezue­lans who were aboard their ves­sel. He said they were tak­en to the Ch­aguara­mas He­li­port where he re­mained un­til last Fri­day.

While he ad­mit­ted to be­ing afraid for his life, he said he want­ed to speak out about the in­ci­dent.

“I don’t want no trou­ble but I here to talk the truth what it is hap­pen. At the end of the day, it’s night­time, they must know they not sup­posed to be shoot­ing be­cause we didn’t have noth­ing to say, il­le­gal. We just see these peo­ple and just de­cide to give them a lit­tle help be­cause they were out.

“It didn’t have no boat around and if it had a next boat there I feel they would have done the same thing. By rights, as fish­er­men you on the wa­ter is to help.”

He said the in­ci­dent still haunts him.

“I have a daugh­ter. Up to now, I does be sleep­ing and I does be see­ing this ba­by. I does be see­ing my­self with this ba­by. It not nice. Every time I think about this and talk about it tears com­ing out from my eyes.”

The fish­er­man said he would not be go­ing back out to sea for a long time. He was re­leased from cus­tody last Fri­day af­ter his at­tor­neys, Bas­deo, Genevieve Thomp­son and Amy Har­ri­paul filed a writ of habeas cor­pus.

In a state­ment on the in­ci­dent, how­ev­er, the Coast Guard had said that just be­fore mid­night on the day in ques­tion, the TTCG in­ter­cep­tor at­tempt­ed to stop a ves­sel. It stat­ed that the of­fi­cers opened fire in “self-de­fence,” af­ter “ag­gres­sive ma­noeu­vres” by the ves­sel that had en­tered in­to this T&T’s wa­ters.

“The ram­ming ef­fort by the sus­pect ves­sel which was larg­er than the ship’s boat caused the 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 state­ment added.

The ba­by’s fu­ner­al al­so took place last Fri­day but his moth­er who un­der­went surgery at the San­gre Grande Hos­pi­tal was not in at­ten­dance. On that day she was dis­charged from the hos­pi­tal and tak­en in­to po­lice cus­tody. The T&T Coast Guard and T&T Po­lice Ser­vice are in­ves­ti­gat­ing the in­ci­dent.