There is still no word on whether he will be criminally charged, but the soldier who was piloting a boat which struck the boat in which 13-year-old American citizen Paige Welch was travelling, causing her to lose part of her arm last month, has had his boat returned to him by the police.

While sources at the Carenage police station confirmed that investigations were continuing on the matter, in which the soldier rammed his boat into the one piloted by Lance Aqui’ (Paige’s cousin), one officer said there was no law to stop the soldier from freely roaming T&T’s seas.

In late August, a pirogue piloted by a local army private, ran into Aqui’s kayak while he and his relatives were at sea within the Scotland Bay area, in Chaguaramas.

American citizens Paige Welch and her mother Racquel Welch, as well as Aqui, who is a Trinidad and Tobago citizen, were injured in the accident and had to be rescued by Coast Guard officials who were on patrol nearby.

Earlier this month Welch’s relatives had set up a local bank account hoping that some donations from the public would help them to offset some of the costs of tending to a number of operations which both mother and child have had to undergo since the incident.

The family has reportedly spent hundreds of thousands of dollars to cover medical and travel expenses in the last month.

The reported bills also include a US$32,000 bill which Clarke Welch, Paige’s father, had to foot to have his daughter airlifted to the Boston’s Children Hospital , mere days after the accident, hoping that her left arm, which was severely injured could be saved.

- Aretha Welch