An­na-Lisa Paul

Se­nior Re­porter

an­na-lisa.paul@guardian.co.tt

Rel­a­tives and friends of Joshua Sama­roo and Ka­ia Sealy con­tin­ued their week­ly protest yes­ter­day as they stood out­side the Tu­na­puna Po­lice Sta­tion call­ing for jus­tice in the po­lice-in­volved shoot­ing.

Small in num­bers but with the same fer­vour, Alyssa Phillip led the hand­ful of peo­ple in their quest for jus­tice over the killing which oc­curred just over one month ago in St Au­gus­tine.

Sama­roo, 31, of Bam­boo Num­ber 1, Val­sayn, was killed on Jan­u­ary 20 dur­ing an al­leged con­fronta­tion with po­lice of­fi­cers.

Footage of the in­ci­dent, which was cap­tured by a res­i­dent’s CCTV cam­eras and lat­er re­leased, prompt­ed over­whelm­ing calls for the res­ig­na­tion of the Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er Al­lis­ter Gue­var­ro fol­low­ing a rev­e­la­tion that the of­fi­cers re­spon­si­ble had not been sus­pend­ed as the po­lice in­ves­ti­ga­tion con­tin­ues.

Speak­ing with re­porters in Tu­na­puna late yes­ter­day, Phillip said that al­though she was dis­ap­point­ed with the poor show­ing by mem­bers of the pub­lic, she was not pre­pared to give up the fight.

Sealy, 24, a moth­er of one, was left paral­ysed fol­low­ing the shoot­ing.

Un­hap­py, the of­fi­cers in­volved had re­mained on the job, al­though they were re­moved from in­ter­fac­ing with the pub­lic – Phillip called on Gue­var­ro not to demon­strate any favouritism.

“They are ba­si­cal­ly say­ing that a crim­i­nal wear­ing blue has more priv­i­leges than the typ­i­cal blue-col­lar crim­i­nal, and that is un­fair. It is not right,” she claimed.

Con­firm­ing the cou­ple’s rel­a­tives and friends were still shak­en, Phillip said she would have prayed with Sealy dur­ing a vis­it yes­ter­day.

The group will host its fourth protest out­side the Arou­ca Po­lice Sta­tion next Wednes­day at 4 pm.