An­na-Lisa Paul

Se­nior Re­porter

an­na-lisa.paul@guardian.co.tt

The sol­dier who was charged with caus­ing the death of Kiss de­liv­ery dri­ver Neil Bal­lai on March 28 has been grant­ed his own bail in the sum of $150,000. Jalani Mapp, of Er­i­ca Street, Laven­tille, was charged with five of­fences aris­ing out of the fa­tal ac­ci­dent along the Solomon Ho­choy High­way.

Mapp, a mem­ber of the T&T De­fence Force was charged with caus­ing death by dan­ger­ous dri­ving, fail­ing to stop af­ter a road traf­fic ac­ci­dent, dan­ger­ous dri­ving, fail­ing to ren­der as­sis­tance, and dri­ving with­out a cer­tifi­cate of in­sur­ance.

Mapp was not called up­on to plead when he ap­peared vir­tu­al­ly be­fore High Court Mas­ter Mar­garet Sookraj-Goswa­mi yes­ter­day. As part of his bail con­di­tions, Mapp has been or­dered to re­port to a po­lice sta­tion one day in the first week of every month, be­tween 6 am and 6 pm.

Bal­lai, 55, of Ec­cles Trace, Spring Vil­lage, Val­sayn, was dri­ving the com­pa­ny’s Isuzu truck when he was rear-end­ed by a black Hyundai Ion­iq, which sped off.

He died at the scene as a re­sult of the ac­ci­dent, while a co-work­er who was in the truck at the time was al­so in­jured and had to be hos­pi­talised. The ac­ci­dent was cap­tured by a dash­cam mount­ed in a ve­hi­cle that had been dri­ving be­hind the truck dri­ven by Bal­lai. 

That footage was lat­er shared on so­cial me­dia and as­sist­ed in the po­lice in iden­ti­fy­ing the dri­ver.

Mapp will reap­pear be­fore a Cou­va mag­is­trate on Au­gust 13. The charges were laid by WPC Her­nan­dez-Cob­bler.