Geisha Kow­lessar

The Min­istry of Sport and Youth Af­fairs has pledged to un­der­take all fu­ner­al ex­pens­es for T&T's world box­ing cham­pi­on, Jizelle Sa­landy. The 21-year-old died af­ter crash­ing in­to a con­crete pil­lar near the NP over­pass at Sea Lots, Port-of-Spain, yes­ter­day morn­ing. At a press con­fer­ence at the min­istry's Aber­crom­by Street, Port-of-Spain, of­fice yes­ter­day, Sport and Youth Af­fairs Min­is­ter Gary Hunt paid glow­ing trib­ute to Sa­landy, say­ing she would be eter­nal­ly missed.

De­scrib­ing Sa­landy's death as "chill­ing," Hunt said when ini­tial­ly in­formed of the ac­ci­dent he be­came dumb­found­ed. He said he rushed to the Port-of-Spain Gen­er­al Hos­pi­tal and was told that Sa­landy was in the op­er­at­ing the­atre. "She was still alive at the time, but the doc­tors were with her," Hunt said. "Then I was told that she had passed on...The doc­tors re­al­ly tried." Say­ing the na­tion had lost a na­tion­al hero, Hunt de­scribed Sa­landy as a tremen­dous mo­ti­va­tor to young peo­ple, par­tic­u­lar­ly to young women.

Re­call­ing Sa­landy's last fight, Hunt said she had shown great im­prove­ment, adding that the min­istry had "big hopes" for the ris­ing star in 2009. He said Sa­landy's death ought to serve as a mes­sage to the na­tion­al com­mu­ni­ty to ex­er­cise cau­tion while on the roads. "I want to ask young peo­ple to be very con­scious about how they con­duct them­selves on the roads, and the na­tion­al com­mu­ni­ty as a whole need to be very care­ful," Hunt said. Al­so ex­press­ing sor­row over Sa­landy's pass­ing, chair­man of the T&T Box­ing Board of Con­trol, Bri­an Lewis, said her death would be dif­fi­cult to ac­cept.

"Just a few days ago, I was ex­treme­ly con­cerned for Richard Thomp­son and Monique Cabral and now to be called out to be in­formed that Jizelle had passed was in­deed shock­ing...Words can­not ex­press how I feel," a shak­en Lewis said. He said Sa­landy was a "role mod­el and world cham­pi­on at a very young age." "Like all young peo­ple, Jizelle was faced with the chal­lenges of the mod­ern times, but she had tremen­dous in­tegri­ty of spir­it and will­ing­ness to achieve her fullest po­ten­tial and to rep­re­sent her coun­try with ho­n­our," Lewis said.

In­for­ma­tion Min­is­ter Neil Parsan­lal, who chaired the con­fer­ence, said fu­ner­al arrange­ments were yet to be an­nounced. Al­so in at­ten­dance were Min­is­ter of Le­gal Af­fairs Pe­ter Tay­lor, Min­is­ter of Com­mu­ni­ty De­vel­op­ment, Cul­ture and Gen­der Af­fairs Mar­lene Mc­Don­ald and am­bas­sador Joan Yuille-Williams.