Trinidad: No bail for Coast Guard man accused of setting companion on fire

(Trinidad Guardian) A 33-year-old Coast Guard of­fi­cer, who set his po­lice of­fi­cer girl­friend on fire dur­ing an ar­gu­ment last week, has been de­nied bail af­ter ap­pear­ing in court this morn­ing.

Nathaniel Bul­lock ap­peared be­fore Se­nior Mag­is­trate Cher­ril-Anne An­toine in the Port-of-Spain Mag­is­trates’ Court charged with caus­ing griev­ous bod­i­ly harm to 29-year-old WPC Kel­ly-Ann Humphrey.

Bul­lock stood silent­ly in the pris­on­er en­clo­sure with his right hand heav­i­ly ban­daged and an “Our Dai­ly Bread” prayer book in his oth­er.

Dur­ing the hear­ing, Bul­lock’s lawyer Ian Brooks asked if she was will­ing to re­mand him in­to the cus­tody of the Coast Guard.

Brooks said that Bul­lock’s su­pe­ri­ors as­sured him that he would be con­fined to the in­fir­mary un­til his wounds heal and would then be placed in a hold­ing cell.

An­toine said she was not com­fort­able with the arrange­ment con­sid­er­ing the vic­tim was still ward­ed in a crit­i­cal con­di­tion at the In­ten­sive Care Unit in the Er­ic Williams Med­ical Sci­ences Com­plex.

Bul­lock was or­dered to reap­pear in court on May 17.

Ac­cord­ing to re­ports, around 4 am, last Sun­day, the cou­ple was at their apart­ment at Bound­ary Road Ex­ten­sion in El So­cor­ro when they got in­to an ar­gu­ment.

Bul­lock re­port­ed­ly doused Humphery with a flam­ma­ble liq­uid and set her on fire.

Neigh­bours heard Humphrey’s screams and forced their way in­to the apart­ment.

They re­strained him as Humphrey, who is as­signed to the guard unit at the Po­lice Ad­min­is­tra­tion Build­ing in Port-of-Spain, was tak­en to hos­pi­tal.

The charge against Bul­lock is ex­pect­ed to be up­grad­ed to mur­der if Humphrey even­tu­al­ly suc­cumbs to her in­juries.