Senior Investigative Reporter
shaliza.hassanali@guardian.co.tt
Friends of Joshua Samaroo’s common-law wife, Kaia Sealy, are expected to take to the streets of Port-of-Spain today to call for justice for the 28-year-old woman who was left paralysed after a police-involved shooting. It was that incident that ended Samaroo’s life.
Samaroo’s relatives, who said he had no criminal record and was never arrested, spoke openly about how his killing has shaken their lives.
When Joshua Samaroo died, his twin brother Caleb felt like he lost his eyes.
Caleb, who is nearly blind after a football struck his face during a friendly match when he was 14, depended on his brother to take care of him.
“He only sees the outline of things now. So Joshua became Caleb’s eyes… by helping him in whatever he needed. He did everything for his older brother. Took him to the hospital for his eye treatment, bought his medication and comforted him when he became depressed,” his father, Christopher Samaroo, told the Sunday Guardian last week.
Knowing that Joshua, 31, is no longer around, Samaroo said Caleb keeps crying, “Dad, I lost my other half.”
Joshua’s death has left his family in pain.
On January 20, Joshua was shot 19 times by police while in his car in St Augustine.
A video of Joshua’s killing, which went viral, sparked outrage on social media.
The video showed that after the car Joshua was driving came to a halt at Bassie Street, following a high-speed police chase, Joshua’s hands were visible outside the driver’s window, but the police fired upon the vehicle, killing him and injuring his common law wife, Kaia Sealy.
Sealy, who was shot in the back, is now paralysed.
With multiple investigations into the incident underway, Samaroo, who has now lost one of his four children, still finds his son’s death incomprehensible.
It’s not made easier by the differing public commentary on his son by officials.
“Those police, when they came out of that vehicle, they did not follow protocol at all. As a matter of fact, in the back seat of my son’s car, there’s a baby seat, and it’s riddled with bullets. Now, if my granddaughter was sitting in the back there, what would have taken place? You can’t just go mad and shoot up a car like that. You don’t know if a child was sitting in the back there?”
The grieving father said the truth will be unearthed in court.
Asked if there was any truth to the claims that the shooting of Joshua was the result of a sting operation gone wrong, Samaroo dismissed those charges.
“But when the truth hits the surface, I want to see what the commissioner (police) and the national security minister will have to say.”
Samaroo said that since Joshua’s killing, rumours have been circulating that his son was involved in illegal activities.
“Yeah, I heard that. I heard that. Listen, I have no doubt people will say a lot. The police will say a lot of things. My son was a hard-working man.”
Whenever Joshua ran short of cash, Samaroo said he helped him out financially.
“So money is not a problem. And if he was a drug dealer, he wouldn’t be asking me for money. I might be asking him for money. So people can say what they want. The police can make up allegations.”
Samaroo is standing firm; his son did nothing wrong and is innocent.
‘He held the family together’
He described his son as an avid lover of the environment, animals, plants and cars, and who had a knack for mending broken things and loved attending church.
Born on May 2, 1994, Joshua was one of a pair of twins.
Five minutes after doctors at the Eric Williams Medical Sciences Complex delivered Caleb, Joshua was born.
“They looked like identical twins at birth. But as they grew, their features changed. They turned out to be fraternal twins,” said 62-year-old Samaroo.
As a child and even throughout his adult years, Joshua loved, cared for and protected Caleb, who is visually impaired.
“The first thing Joshua did after learning to walk as an infant was to carry Caleb’s bottle of milk to him every morning. They were inseparable because of the love they had for each other,” Samaroo said.
Samaroo’s other children are his two daughters, Christine, 36, and Imani, 19.
Reflecting on Joshua’s younger days, Samaroo said his son was an average student who attended Briggs Preparatory School in Cascade and later Woodbrook Government School but left school before graduating.
Sometime in the early 2000s, Samaroo said his wife, Kathy Ann, a US citizen, wanted to pursue a new life, and the entire family had to migrate to America, where they resided for a few years. The family lived in Maryland, New York, and Atlanta.
The transition to a new life in a strange country was Joshua’s biggest challenge. A few years later, the family returned to Trinidad, where Kathy Ann was consecrated as the first Pentecostal female bishop in the country, tasked with managing Maranatha Ministry in Arima.
The children, Samaroo said, attended church regularly.
“Joshua was deeply rooted in religion. He loved going to church with his mother.”
In 2018, Kathy Ann passed away due to health complications.
The one person who held the family unit together was Joshua.
“He used to say, dad, I know we don’t have mommy here again, look after my brother and sisters because this is all we have. But he was the person who looked after us and was always at our sides.”
Samaroo said what set Joshua apart from his siblings was his leadership qualities.
“He always took the initiative to do something and not only for me, you know. He will do it for anybody, you know.”
‘No criminal record’
Kaia, 28, and Joshua have a five-year-old daughter named Zoe.
She recently opened a salon in San Juan, and to supplement her income, Kaia also accepted private jobs from her clients.
Joshua also has a nine-year-old son from a previous relationship.
“He was a family man,” Samaroo insisted.
On Wednesday, after being discharged from the hospital, Kaia told Zoe that her father had passed away.
“Zoe was so attached to Joshua. You often saw that little girl resting her head on her father’s shoulder. This child lost her father, and I have lost a son…a great one that is,” Samaroo said, his voice choked with emotion.
Samaroo said his son had no criminal record and was not of interest to the police.
So too was Kaia.
“The police never arrested him. As a matter of fact, I have more criminal record than him. I made jail already. Last year, I was in jail. If you had to pick out the bad one, I am the bad one,” said Samaroo, a truck driver.
He refused to say what he was incarcerated for.
On the day of the fatal shooting, Samaroo said Joshua was taking Kaia to their Bamboo Settlement home shortly after noon, following which, he had to pick up Zoe from school.
He said the police fired 24 bullets at the couple.
An autopsy report stated that Joshua died as a result of multiple gunshot wounds.
“It’s really hard to accept and digest knowing that nothing could bring him back.”
