Stephon Nicholas

To­ba­go Cor­re­spon­dent

The To­ba­go House of As­sem­bly (THA) has de­nied li­a­bil­i­ty in the fa­tal jet ski ac­ci­dent at Pi­geon Point beach, which claimed the life of sev­en-year-old An­gel­i­ca Jo­gie, in­sist­ing re­spon­si­bil­i­ty rests “sole­ly and square­ly” on the jet ski op­er­a­tor.

The for­mer San Fer­nan­do TML stu­dent was struck by a jet ski while in the bathing-on­ly zone at the pop­u­lar beach. She was lat­er pro­nounced dead at the Scar­bor­ough Gen­er­al Hos­pi­tal.

In a Ju­ly 15 pre-ac­tion pro­to­col let­ter, Free­dom Law Cham­bers, rep­re­sent­ing the Jo­gie fam­i­ly, said it in­tend­ed to sue the THA, Pi­geon Point Her­itage Park and jet ski op­er­a­tor Ash­worth Bur­nett.

Re­spond­ing to the let­ter on Tues­day, the Di­vi­sion of Le­gal Af­fairs said the THA con­tin­ues to em­pathise with the Jo­gie fam­i­ly over the tragedy.

“Our clients ac­knowl­edge that the un­fold­ing events from and in­clu­sive of April 8, have been and will re­main a painful ex­pe­ri­ence for your clients. How­ev­er, whilst our clients com­mis­er­ate with the cir­cum­stances sur­round­ing your clients’ loss, they wish to make a clear dis­tinc­tion be­tween ex­tend­ing em­pa­thy and com­pas­sion and em­brac­ing li­a­bil­i­ty,” the di­vi­sion said.

It added that the le­gal ac­tion by the fam­i­ly was mis­di­rect­ed. In­stead, the di­vi­sion ad­vised that the claim should fo­cus on 33-year-old Bur­nett, who is cur­rent­ly on re­mand charged with manslaugh­ter.

At­tor­neys rep­re­sent­ing An­gel­i­ca’s fam­i­ly al­lege the de­fen­dants each breached a du­ty of care, adding the THA should have learned from past ma­rine in­ci­dents and tak­en suf­fi­cient steps to in­crease safe­ty at the beach.

How­ev­er, the di­vi­sion coun­tered that the THA has ad­dressed safe­ty gaps fol­low­ing pre­vi­ous ma­rine in­ci­dents.

Ref­er­enc­ing a 2008 boat­ing ac­ci­dent in which the THA was sued, the di­vi­sion said the judge iden­ti­fied the lack of sig­nage at Pi­geon Point as well as the non-im­ple­men­ta­tion of buoys and bar­ri­ers as ar­eas where the THA breached its du­ty of care.

The di­vi­sion said that while that in­ci­dent took place in a dif­fer­ent area from the April 8 tragedy, the THA did a wider as­sess­ment of the ma­rine space and “the gaps iden­ti­fied by the learned judge have since been closed.”

The di­vi­sion not­ed that the As­sem­bly’s pow­ers are con­sti­tu­tion­al­ly lim­it­ed, but said the pas­sage of the 2020 To­ba­go Ma­rine Parks Bill and the up­dat­ed 2026 ver­sion in April showed the As­sem­bly was se­ri­ous about safe­ty.

Both bills were sub­mit­ted to Cab­i­net but are yet to be­come law.

Af­firm­ing the po­si­tion, Le­gal Af­fairs Sec­re­tary Adan­na Joseph-Wal­lace told Guardian Me­dia, “As a re­spon­si­ble gov­ern­ing body, the THA can­not ab­sorb on­to it­self li­a­bil­i­ty for the bad con­duct of ac­tors ex­ter­nal to the THA or take re­spon­si­bil­i­ty for the con­duct of the pub­lic at large.”

But An­gel­i­ca’s fa­ther, Arnold Jo­gie, main­tains that the THA had a role to play in his daugh­ter’s un­for­tu­nate death.

He said, “I know they will de­ny. They will want to put all the blame on the jet ski own­er, but they have a part to play in it too, but the lawyers and them will han­dle that.”