Am­bi­ka Ja­gas­sars­ingh

Last week­end, a chow ven­dor dubbed “Chow King” went vi­ral on so­cial me­dia af­ter be­ing ar­rest­ed for il­le­gal­ly sell­ing his goods in the Croisee Plaza, in San Juan.

But while he ac­cepts re­spon­si­bil­i­ty for break­ing the law, he stands by his re­ac­tion to the of­fi­cers try­ing to take him in­to cus­tody.

“When the of­fi­cer put the hand­cuff on me, I told him I had an in­jury in my hand but he didn’t care he was bend­ing my hand, I have proof to show … and they didn’t know that I was med­ical­ly in­jured,” Joshua Fal­tine, 20, told Guardian Me­dia in an in­ter­view.

At the age of 15, Fal­tine was the vic­tim of a dri­ve by shoot­ing and it’s changed his life for­ev­er.

“As a youth, go­ing movie towne... I jumped in a maxi to go home and when I was ap­proach­ing some peo­ple were shoot­ing at the maxi... bul­lets were all over the maxi. I got shot in my chest and the bul­let lodged in my shoul­der,” he said.

Still lodged there to this day, the bul­let is still caus­ing him agony in more ways than just phys­i­cal­ly, and to top it all off, he was not com­pen­sat­ed. It’s why he said he has no choice but to be an en­tre­pre­neur.

“When you go by a boss­man and he say lift up that and you can’t lift it up, it have 20 oth­er youths will­ing to lift it up. I have to work for my­self.”

His first at­tempt at an hon­est liv­ing was sell­ing bot­tled wa­ter at the Mr D’or traf­fic lights in 2020 short­ly af­ter the pan­dem­ic took root.

But like many oth­ers glob­al­ly, he was forced to in­no­vate. Re­al­is­ing he had ac­cess to hun­dreds of man­goes, Fal­tine en­tered the chow busi­ness. Sell­ing man­go and pineap­ple chow he saw it as a way to in­ter­act with the pub­lic.

“It is a very ex­cit­ing job, I love it,” he said.

He ac­cepts that he broke the law by ped­al­ing his chow de­spite his pre­vi­ous warn­ings, how­ev­er, in­sists that he needs to work to pro­vide for him­self.

“I was il­le­gal­ly vend­ing, that was a chance, I know the risk, so I take all wrongs for that.”

De­spite the in­ter­ac­tions with the po­lice and be­ing up­set, Fal­tine not­ed that the 2017 in­ci­dent made him “watch life in a dif­fer­ent way” and that “crime doesn’t pay.”

“I could’ve cho­sen to be bad but it doesn’t make sense,” he stat­ed.

He now dreams of open­ing a chow store in Trinidad and hope­ful­ly one day to reach in­ter­na­tion­al lev­els.

On hear­ing of Fal­tine’s sit­u­a­tion, cit­i­zens along with the chair­man of Tu­na­puna/Pi­ar­co Re­gion­al Cor­po­ra­tion, Kwasi Robin­son, of­fered the 20-year-old as­sis­tance and hope to have him work­ing by Fri­day.

Robin­son was able to se­cure Fal­tine a spot at the Food Vil­lage at the Ed­die Hart Sa­van­nah in Tacarigua hop­ing it to be an op­por­tu­ni­ty at a sec­ond chance for the young ven­dor.

“As a young man who has the right idea, he might have went about it the wrong way so we have a chance at re­demp­tion... it’s about us com­ing to­geth­er as a com­mu­ni­ty Trinidad and To­ba­go, the young man and the cor­po­ra­tion to just try and im­prove the sit­u­a­tion,” he said.

Af­ter the al­ter­ca­tion with three po­lice of­fi­cers on Sat­ur­day, Fal­tine was slapped with sev­en charges in­clud­ing re­sist­ing ar­rest, il­le­gal­ly vend­ing in pub­lic and vi­o­la­tion of an of­fi­cer.

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