Missing report interrupts school shooting Inquest

AFTER IT was discovered that a part of a medical report form was missing, the evidence being given at an inquest at the Port-of-Spain Magistrates’ Court by an Emergency Medical Technician (EMT) attached to the Emergency Health Services (EHS) was temporarily halted yesterday until the rest of the report was retrieved.

EMT Sheldon Jessimy was giving evidence at the inquest into the circumstances surrounding the death of Phillip Seerattan at the International School in Westmoorings on November 20, 2002.  Seerattan was shot dead by two police officers after he entered the school’s compound and shot a security guard. Jessimy, using mainly medical jargon, began telling the court what occurred from the time he and his partner, Nadia King, were instructed to go the school. However, he was soon ordered to step down from the witness stand by Coroner Sherman Mc Nicoll when he could not account for a part of the medical report he was using as a reference. Jessimy was the person who had done the report. The EHS’s acting human resources manager, who had given evidence earlier, was called into the courtroom and he assured Mc Nicoll that an attempt would be made to locate the rest of the document while the other witnesses scheduled to give evidence took the stand.

Rajin Singh, an employee of the parents of one of the students, told the court that he went to pick up his boss’ son on the day in question.  He said while standing at the front of the school he heard a loud explosion and saw children running. Then, he said, he saw a security guard running with his hand covering his mouth before he (the security guard) fell to the ground bleeding profusely.  Singh said he was “frightened and sweating” and quickly drove off the compound. Two of Seerattan’s former teachers, Akash Ramdial and Jerry Sager, described the teenager as a quiet loner with no friends.  Seerattan had been a student of the  St Augustine Community College at Wilson Street, St Augustine for a few years.  According to Ramdial, the teenager was “not a terribly brilliant student.” When Jessimy was again called to the stand, he informed the magistrate that the missing document still had not been located. Mc Nicoll then told him to return on Tuesday with the document to continue giving evidence.