The coastal paradise of Trinidad and Tobago’s Pigeon Point Heritage Park has once again been the site of a devastating watercraft tragedy, claiming the life of 7-year-old Angelica Jogie last Wednesday. The young girl’s death after being struck by an out-of-control jet ski is far from an isolated incident—it marks the latest entry in a decades-long pattern of preventable water-related deaths and injuries that have plagued the island nation’s popular coastal recreation areas. This newest tragedy has drawn immediate connections to a near-identical incident at the exact same beach that occurred 17 years earlier, exposing persistent gaps in safety regulation that have gone unaddressed despite clear court orders.
In 2007, a runaway pirogue crashed into two teenage vacationers—17-year-old Yanik Quesnel from Trinidad and Tobago and his girlfriend Ana Carolina Barry-Laso, a Spanish national—who were swimming off Pigeon Point. The collision left Quesnel permanently paralyzed, prompting a years-long legal battle that held both the Tobago House of Assembly (THA), the local governing body, and Pigeon Point Heritage Park Ltd, the company that manages the park, responsible for visitor safety.
In the 2010 ruling, Justice Judith Jones blasted the two entities for their failure to address a known hazard to swimmers. The judgment explicitly found that THA and the park operator had breached their duty of care to visitors by failing to keep large watercraft far from swimming shorelines and failing to install clear warning signs for beachgoers. Jones further noted that the teen victims had exercised reasonable caution for their own safety and were legally entitled to expect proper safety protections from the managing authorities.
In a public news conference held the same night of Angelica Jogie’s death, THA Chief Secretary Farley Augustine referenced the 2010 ruling, which found the assembly liable for the 2007 harm. He framed the newest tragedy as a consequence of rule-breaking by watercraft operators, but public records show that even after the landmark court ruling, safety reforms have been slow to stop recurring incidents.
Within a year of the 2010 judgment, THA implemented a ban on all recreational watercraft use at two popular Tobago beaches: Store Bay and Buccoo. Then-Environment Secretary Hilton Sandy stated at the time that the ban was explicitly intended to curb harm from reckless watercraft operation, allowing only jet skis operated by the Tourism Division for rescue purposes to operate in the restricted areas. Yet despite this initial policy change, dangerous watercraft incidents have continued to claim lives and cause severe injury across coastal areas of Trinidad and Tobago year after year.
A review of incident records reveals a disturbing pattern of unstopped harm: In 2010, Tobago resident Andell Roberts died in hospital after losing consciousness while attempting a stunt on his personal jet ski. Two years later, three American visitors—40-year-old Racquel Welch, her 13-year-old daughter Paige Welch, and their relative Lance Aqui—suffered devastating injuries when a pirogue linked to the Trinidad and Tobago Regiment crashed into their kayak at Scotland Bay in Chaguaramas, splitting the small watercraft in half. Paige Welch’s left arm was nearly severed in the collision, and all three victims required hospitalization. Later that same year, 17-year-old Angel Superville died in a jet ski accident at the same bay, in what was only his first time operating the watercraft. He collided with a tow rope connecting a larger boat to a dinghy, and the force of the impact threw the teen—who was wearing a life jacket and remained conscious immediately after the crash—into the water, where he succumbed to his injuries.
In 2014, 26-year-old Sheriza Ramdath was killed at Spring Bridge in Moruga when she lost control of her jet ski and crashed into a mangrove, dying at the scene of the accident. Her brother suffered severe head and facial injuries in the same crash. Four years later, another young life was lost at Pigeon Point: primary school student Shem Murray died two days after his jet ski hit an underwater coral formation, throwing him from the vehicle. He was transferred from a local Tobago hospital to a facility in Trinidad for advanced care, but could not be revived. That same year, 35-year-old fisherman Sheldon Guerra died off Los Iros when another vessel broadsided the fishing boat he was sharing with four crewmates, who had stopped to retrieve a fishing net. The collision happened in darkness, overturning both boats and throwing all passengers overboard, killing Guerra.
More recent incidents continue the trend: In October 2022, a lifeguard required emergency medical care after being struck in the head by a fishing boat while swimming off Maracas Bay. Just last year, 21-year-old Mathias Jerry went missing after a jet ski accident near Tobago’s No Man’s Land; his body was later recovered from submerged waters.
Angelica Jogie’s death has renewed calls for urgent action to enforce existing safety regulations and close gaps that have allowed decades of preventable harm to affect both local residents and visiting tourists at some of the nation’s most popular beach destinations.