An­na-Lisa Paul

Se­nior Re­porter

an­na-lisa.paul@guardian.co.tt

Christo­pher Sama­roo, the fa­ther of po­lice shoot­ing vic­tim Joshua Sama­roo, was said to “be okay and in good spir­its” last evening, de­spite be­ing in po­lice cus­tody for over 24 hours.

At­tor­ney Aaron Lewis con­firmed that Sama­roo was tak­en to the Wood­brook Po­lice Sta­tion on Mon­day night and was moved to the Bel­mont Po­lice Sta­tion last evening.

Con­firm­ing that Sama­roo’s fam­i­ly was al­lowed to drop off food, med­ica­tion and cloth­ing for him yes­ter­day, Lewis re­vealed Sama­roo was a heart pa­tient who re­quired a dai­ly reg­i­men of med­ica­tions. He said the po­lice had been un­der­stand­ing in how they were deal­ing with Sama­roo.

Guardian Me­dia con­firmed the po­lice al­so re­turned to Sama­roo’s home at La Sie­va, Mar­aval, to car­ry out an­oth­er search yes­ter­day.

Lewis said Sama­roo and his fam­i­ly had been ex­pect­ing the po­lice to de­tain him, giv­en com­ments about the po­lice ser­vice at­trib­uted to him dur­ing a talk-show on Sun­day, which were al­leged to be sedi­tious.

Sama­roo was de­tained pur­suant to Reg­u­la­tion 11 (a) of the Emer­gency Pow­er Reg­u­la­tions, which states no per­son shall “en­deav­our, whether oral­ly or oth­er­wise, to in­flu­ence pub­lic opin­ion in a man­ner like­ly to be prej­u­di­cial to pub­lic safe­ty.”

Sama­roo has been vo­cal in the me­dia since the fa­tal shoot­ing of his son on Jan­u­ary 20 in St Au­gus­tine. Joshua’s girl­friend Ka­ia Sealy was al­so in­jured in that in­ci­dent but has since been charged with sev­er­al of­fences in re­la­tion to that in­ci­dent.

The se­nior Sama­roo was de­tained by of­fi­cers at the St Clair Po­lice Sta­tion on Mon­day, af­ter he and Lewis went there to find out why his home was searched ear­li­er.

Sama­roo had ear­li­er gone to the Cen­tral Po­lice Sta­tion in down­town Port-of-Spain to “clear up” what he said was mis­in­for­ma­tion re­leased on­line fol­low­ing his ap­pear­ance on the talk show. He then went to the St Clair sta­tion af­ter learn­ing his home had been raid­ed and was de­tained there.