Soldier to pay $60,000 in damages to grandmother, granddaughter in assault case

A High Court judge has ruled in favor of a grandmother and her granddaughter, ordering a regiment officer to pay them $60,000 in damages for an unprovoked attack in 2018.

Justice Margaret Mohammed delivered the judgment on February 28.

She found Melissa Williams liable for assault and battery and awarded compensation to Cheryl Antoine and her granddaughter Taskiela October.

Antoine and October, then a secondary school student, lived at Eastern Quarry, Laventille, near Antoine.

The case stemmed from an incident on October 8, 2018, when Williams, who was off-duty and at home, attacked the grandmother during an altercation. The day before, Williams had asked October to get her brother-in-law to move his vehicle on the road. She allegedly said she would get “somebody to *** move it” if he did not.

The next day, Antoine was on her way to the Port of Spain General Hospital and October was on her way to school, when Williams, dressed in nightwear, ran up to the grandmother, struck her in the chest, threw her to the ground, and repeatedly hit her in the head. During the assault, she pinned the elderly woman to the ground and struck the granddaughter when she tried to intervene.

Antoine said she suffered damage to her right eye, lost two teeth and her gold earrings, while her granddaughter suffered a thigh injury.

The grandmother filed a police report on the day of the incident and later took the matter to the Port of Spain Magistrates' Court, where Williams was found guilty of assault and ordered to pay a $4,000 fine.

In her ruling, Mohammed said the grandmother and granddaughter’s version of what happened was more probable when assessing the evidence.

In her defence, Williams denied the attack, claiming that the grandmother was the aggressor and had physically attacked her first, snatching her cell phone and breaking it. She also claimed she was pregnant at the time and that the alleged assault caused a miscarriage, for which she later sought grief counselling.

However, Mohammed rejected Williams’s account that Antoine was the first to attack.

“In my view, the defendant’s version was less probable. It was less probable that the defendant having heard the first claimant aggressively calling out to her would have still exited her home to take out the trash, while she continued speaking on her cell phone and knowing that the first claimant was awaiting her.”

She also said it was more probable that Williams struck October, who attempted to intervene when she saw her grandmother being attacked.

“It was more plausible that on the day of the incident the defendant was angry about the vehicle which had not been moved and upon seeing the first claimant attacked her to make good on the threat she had issued on the prior day.

“In light of those findings of fact, I have concluded that the defendant is liable to the first and second claimants for damages.”

The judge ordered Williams to pay Antoine $4,300 in special damages with interest at 1.25 per cent from October 8, 2018 to February 28 and $45,000 in general damages with 2.5 per cent interest from September 1, 2020 to February 28.

She was also ordered to pay $15,000 to October with interest of 2.5 per cent from September 20, 2020, when they served their lawsuit, to Friday’s date.

Williams was also ordered to pay the family’s costs of $16,860 and $14,000 for her counterclaim, in which she alleged she had been attacked first, which the judge dismissed.

Attorneys Arden Williams and Mariah Ramrattan represented the grandmother and granddaughter while Kely-Jo Victoria Sirju and Savitri Rambaran represented Williams.