Derek Achong

Se­nior Re­porter

derek.achong@guardian.co.tt

Ka­ia Sealy has been grant­ed $700,000 bail and per­mit­ted to trav­el back and forth to the Unit­ed States to con­tin­ue med­ical treat­ment while her crim­i­nal case re­lat­ed to a fa­tal po­lice-in­volved shoot­ing in Jan­u­ary is be­fore the court.

Sealy, a hair styl­ist from Mendez Dri­ve, Champ Fleurs, was grant­ed bail when she ap­peared vir­tu­al­ly be­fore High Court Mas­ter Nazeera Ali from the Tu­na­puna Po­lice Sta­tion yes­ter­day morn­ing.

Guardian Me­dia un­der­stands that Sealy was ex­pect­ed to ac­cess the bail late yes­ter­day evening, af­ter her rel­a­tives pre­sent­ed the nec­es­sary doc­u­men­ta­tion for ver­i­fi­ca­tion and pro­cess­ing.

Sealy’s court ap­pear­ance came hours af­ter she vol­un­tar­i­ly re­turned from the US to face the charges. (See oth­er sto­ry)

Dressed in a grey hood­ie with the hood down, Sealy, a 25-year-old moth­er of a five-year-old child, sat silent­ly through­out the hear­ing, which last­ed a lit­tle over an hour. She on­ly spoke when asked by Mas­ter Ali to con­firm her cur­rent con­di­tion.

“I am okay. I would have to have my catheter re­moved by a doc­tor or nurse,” Sealy said.

Dur­ing the hear­ing, Mas­ter Ali read eight crim­i­nal charges that arose from a con­tro­ver­sial po­lice-in­volved shoot­ing at the cor­ner of Col­lege Road and Bassie Street Ex­ten­sion, St Au­gus­tine, on Jan­u­ary 20.

She was charged with un­law­ful­ly killing her part­ner Joshua Sama­roo (manslaugh­ter); shoot­ing at po­lice of­fi­cers Quin­cy Si­mon, Daryl Bartholomew and Gary Dun­can with in­tent to cause them griev­ous bod­i­ly harm; pos­ses­sion of a Glock pis­tol and two rounds of am­mu­ni­tion; pos­ses­sion of a firearm with in­tent to en­dan­ger life; and dis­charg­ing a firearm with­in 40 me­tres of a pub­lic road.

Sealy was not called up­on to plead to the charges, which were laid in­dictably.

Po­lice pros­e­cu­tor An­tho­ny Ja­cob did not ob­ject to bail for Sealy, based on her hav­ing a clean crim­i­nal record be­fore be­ing charged in re­la­tion to the in­ci­dent.

He al­so con­sid­ered sub­mis­sions from Sealy’s lawyers, Lar­ry Williams and Fay­ola Sandy, who said their client had to re­turn to the US pe­ri­od­i­cal­ly to con­tin­ue treat­ment and re­ha­bil­i­ta­tion for in­juries she sus­tained in the in­ci­dent, which has left her a para­plegic.

Williams and Sandy pro­vid­ed doc­u­men­ta­tion of her sched­uled med­ical ap­point­ments, in­clud­ing one lat­er this month for her to be fit­ted for a cus­tom wheel­chair. They al­so pro­vid­ed an ad­dress in Boston, Mass­a­chu­setts, where Sealy would stay when she goes to con­tin­ue treat­ment.

In grant­i­ng Sealy bail, Mas­ter Ali di­rect­ed that she pro­vide the court and the po­lice with de­tails of her trav­el arrange­ments a week be­fore she plans to leave Trinidad.

Mas­ter Ali al­so set dead­lines for the fil­ing of ev­i­dence and wit­ness state­ments against Sealy and set her suf­fi­cien­cy hear­ing for Oc­to­ber 22. A sta­tus hear­ing to con­firm that the dead­lines are met was sched­uled for Oc­to­ber 8.

At the start of the hear­ing, Williams raised con­cerns over how Sealy was treat­ed up­on her re­turn to Trinidad.

He said while the po­lice had pre­vi­ous­ly agreed that she would be al­lowed to be ex­am­ined by a doc­tor be­fore sur­ren­der­ing to them for the hear­ing, she was in­stead ar­rest­ed at the Pi­ar­co In­ter­na­tion­al Air­port and tak­en to the Arou­ca Po­lice Sta­tion. He said she was placed in an un­san­i­tary cell de­spite con­cerns raised over her med­ical con­di­tion.

“They (the po­lice) did not even have hand sani­tis­er,” Williams said.

Ja­cob apol­o­gised, as he claimed that the plan had to be changed af­ter se­nior po­lice of­fi­cers stat­ed that the sum­mons un­der which she was no­ti­fied of the charges was not served with­in the re­quired time be­cause she was abroad. He said they de­cid­ed to ar­rest and charge her im­me­di­ate­ly up­on her re­turn home, as they were con­cerned the sum­mons may be chal­lenged due to the is­sue of late ser­vice.

Asked to sum­marise the ev­i­dence against Sealy, Ja­cob stat­ed that the State would be re­ly­ing on 30 wit­ness­es and ex­hibits, in­clud­ing a gun, two rounds of am­mu­ni­tion and three spent shells that were al­leged­ly found in the cou­ple’s car af­ter the shoot­ing. He claimed that the spent shells were linked to the gun al­leged­ly found in the car through bal­lis­tic test­ing.

He re­quest­ed a month for the case file to be trans­ferred to the Of­fice of the Di­rec­tor of Pub­lic Pros­e­cu­tions (DPP) for a State pros­e­cu­tor to be as­signed.

Ja­cob al­so not­ed that Sealy re­fused to give an in­ti­mate DNA sam­ple for test­ing up­on her ar­rest and in­di­cat­ed that an ap­pli­ca­tion would be made for her to be or­dered to com­ply. He claimed that in­ves­ti­ga­tors need­ed to com­pare her DNA to sam­ples col­lect­ed from the car.

Williams claimed that his client was con­cerned that the sam­ple may be im­prop­er­ly used to bol­ster the ev­i­dence against her and would await the writ­ten ap­pli­ca­tion from pros­e­cu­tors. He al­so ques­tioned why the test­ing was nec­es­sary.

“What is it to be com­pared against?” Williams said.

“Why would you need her DNA to com­pare with blood when there is no is­sue that she was in the car?” he said.