Family of Military Boat Strike Victims Sue Over Deaths (1)

Family members of two Trinidadian men killed in a US strike on their boat sued the Trump administration for their relative’s wrongful deaths, saying the government has offered no public evidence the vessel was carrying drugs.

The men, Chad Joseph, 26, and Rishi Samaroo, 41, were killed along with four others on Oct. 14 when a US missile struck their boat as it traveled from Venezuela to Trinidad, the families said in a complaint filed Tuesday in the US District Court for the District of Massachusetts. Joseph and Samaroo allegedly had been fishing off the Venezuelan coast and were returning home.

The Trump administration’s three-dozen strikes against boats in international waters have killed an estimated 125 people, the lawsuit said. The strikes have raised concerns about extrajudicial killings.

The plaintiffs, Joseph’s mother Lenore Burnley and Samaroo’s sister Sallycar Korasingh, said the “premeditated and intentional killings lack any plausible legal justification” and were “simply murders, ordered by individuals at the highest levels of government.” They are represented by the American Civil Liberties Union and the Center for Constitutional Rights.

The lawsuit challenges the strikes and resulting deaths under the Death on the High Seas Act and the Alien Tort Statute.

“These are lawless killings in cold blood,” said Baher Azmy, legal director of the Center for Constitutional Rights, “killings for sport and killings for theater, which is why we need a court of law to proclaim what is true and constrain what is lawless.”

The Trump administration, which has celebrated the strikes on targeting drug traffickers, hasn’t offered any evidence publicly to show the people it killed in the Oct. 14 strike or others were drug cartel affiliates or members, the families said in the lawsuit. No proof has been offered that the boats were carrying drugs or that their cargo was heading to the United States, they added.

White House spokeswoman Anna Kelly said in a statement that President Trump used “lawful authority to take decisive action” against the boat,” which carried “designated narcoterrorists bringing deadly poison to our shores.”

The case is Burnley v. United States, D. Mass., No. 1:26-cv-10364, complaint filed 1/27/26.