Derek Achong

Se­nior Re­porter

derek.achong@guardian.co.tt

A re­tired nurse has threat­ened to pur­sue con­tempt of court pro­ceed­ings against Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er Al­lis­ter Gue­var­ro over his re­port­ed fail­ure to abide by a court or­der di­rect­ing him to dis­close de­tails of an in­ves­ti­ga­tion in­to her daugh­ter’s “mys­te­ri­ous” death that was ruled a sui­cide.

In April, High Court Judge Ava­son Quin­lan-Williams up­held Rosan­na Smith’s ju­di­cial re­view law­suit over the han­dling of her dis­clo­sure re­quest un­der the Free­dom of In­for­ma­tion Act (FOIA).

Jus­tice Quin­lan-Williams ruled that the de­ci­sion to refuse dis­clo­sure was un­rea­son­able, ir­ra­tional, an im­prop­er ex­er­cise of dis­cre­tion and an abuse of pow­er.

She grant­ed an or­der com­pelling the dis­clo­sure with­in 14 days and or­dered the T&T Po­lice Ser­vice (TTPS) to pay her $38,925 in le­gal costs.

In a con­tempt ap­pli­ca­tion, filed last Mon­day and ob­tained by Guardian Me­dia, Smith’s lawyers Mar­tin George and Chan­tal Al­leyne-Charles claimed they is­sued sev­er­al writ­ten re­minders af­ter re­ceiv­ing the judg­ment and did not re­ceive a re­sponse.

They not­ed that on Au­gust 19, the TTPS lawyer Anya Ra­mute-Mo­han re­spond­ed and claimed that there were no doc­u­ments left to dis­close ex­cept a tox­i­col­o­gy re­port.

They al­so claimed that she said the nec­es­sary ad­min­is­tra­tive steps were be­ing tak­en for Smith to re­ceive the le­gal costs.

George and Al­leyne-Charles said, “To date, the Re­spon­dent has nei­ther pro­vid­ed the out­stand­ing in­for­ma­tion and/or doc­u­ments nor pro­vid­ed a sub­stan­tive ex­pla­na­tion iden­ti­fy­ing the doc­u­ments not re­ceived/ob­tained/lo­cat­ed and the steps tak­en to se­cure them. There­fore, the al­leged breach of the Court’s Or­der is con­tin­u­ing and con­tu­me­lious.”

Not­ing that Gue­var­ro and the TTPS nev­er ap­plied for a vari­a­tion of the court’s or­der, they said: “The Ap­pli­cant has an ar­guable and prop­er ba­sis for in­vok­ing the Court’s con­tempt and com­mit to prison ju­ris­dic­tion.”

The ap­pli­ca­tion is ex­pect­ed to come up for hear­ing when the 2026/2027 Law Term opens this month.

Ac­cord­ing to re­ports, Smith’s 25-year-old daugh­ter Maria went miss­ing on Oc­to­ber 15, 2021.

Two days lat­er, her body was found in an aban­doned ve­hi­cle in a forest­ed area near Spring Bridge, Blan­chisseuse. She was cov­ered from head to toe with a blan­ket.

All the win­dows in the ve­hi­cle were closed ex­cept one that was par­tial­ly ajar and had a hose lead­ing to the ve­hi­cle’s ex­haust.

In the case, Smith claimed she was in­formed by homi­cide de­tec­tives that her daugh­ter’s death was ruled as a sui­cide, al­though the in­ves­ti­ga­tion was not closed.

Smith claimed she gained ac­cess to her daugh­ter’s backed-up What­sApp mes­sen­ger chats and dis­cov­ered a mes­sage thread which re­vealed a se­cret in­mate re­la­tion­ship with a mar­ried rel­a­tive, who is a po­lice of­fi­cer.

She claimed that she for­ward­ed the in­for­ma­tion to in­ves­ti­ga­tors but re­ceived no up­date on the probe.

Smith, through her lawyers, first filed a sep­a­rate case seek­ing to com­pel the TTPS to con­tin­ue its probe in­to her daugh­ter’s death.

In re­sponse to the first law­suit, the TTPS in­di­cat­ed that the in­ves­ti­ga­tion was still on­go­ing and in­ves­ti­ga­tors were await­ing a tox­i­col­o­gy re­port.

Af­ter her re­quests for an up­date were ig­nored ear­li­er this year, she made a FOIA ap­pli­ca­tion to Home­land Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter Roger Alexan­der to com­pel the dis­clo­sure of in­for­ma­tion re­lat­ed to the probe.

The re­quest was di­rect­ed to the TTPS, which agreed to pro­vide an up­date but mere­ly gave the same in­for­ma­tion that was pro­vid­ed in re­sponse to her ini­tial case, lead­ing to the case that was de­cid­ed by Jus­tice Quin­lan-Williams.