Af­ter the mur­der of his son last year and the dis­ap­pear­ance of his daugh­ter eight years ago, Frankie Ra­jku­mar is em­brac­ing every ounce of joy life throws at him, es­pe­cial­ly af­ter his grand­son Tor­res Sookdeo was se­lect­ed to be part of the na­tion­al un­der-13 crick­et team.

The teen was gift­ed crick­et gear from Oropouche East MP Dr Roodal Mooni­lal last week.

Speak­ing at the hand­ing-over cer­e­mo­ny at the Debe con­stituen­cy of­fice last Thurs­day, Ra­jku­mar said he was elat­ed by his grand­son’s achieve­ments. He said he is con­fi­dent that his grand­son will one day be se­lect­ed for the West In­dies team and be part of the coun­try’s un­der-13 na­tion­al team.

Tor­res, a Form One stu­dent of Na­pari­ma Col­lege, cur­rent­ly plays for the Clarke Road Sports Club and re­cent­ly went on a tour to Guyana.

Ra­jku­mar ad­mit­ted that life has been tough since his daugh­ter Ria Sookdeo’s kid­nap­ping eight years ago and the sub­se­quent mur­der of his son, Richard, last year. He cred­it­ed God for giv­ing him the strength to move for­ward.

“We went through a hard and a dif­fi­cult time in life, but you know life must go on and every day goes by we still think about our daugh­ter and al­so our son who died last year, who got shot and killed. As I said, life has to go on.” Ra­jku­mar’s daugh­ter, Ria, was snatched af­ter drop­ping off her chil­dren at their school in Pic­ton Vil­lage near Debe in Sep­tem­ber 2016. Af­ter spend­ing thou­sands of dol­lars and search­ing re­mote ar­eas in Trinidad, the fam­i­ly re­mains with more ques­tions than an­swers.

Com­pound­ing the fam­i­ly’s trau­ma, Ra­jku­mar’s son, Richard, 45, was gunned down in May last year. Po­lice re­port­ed that on May 12, the me­chan­ic was at his busi­ness when a black Nis­san Ti­i­da stopped in front of the garage and a man came out and shot him. He died two days lat­er.

At the hand­ing-over cer­e­mo­ny, Sookdeo was pre­sent­ed with a hel­met, bat­ting gloves and a crick­et bag by Mooni­lal.

“We want to con­grat­u­late Tor­res, notwith­stand­ing re­al­ly tough cir­cum­stances, that you would go on to be in a won­der­ful col­lege, study­ing, and now he would be mak­ing his mark on the na­tion­al crick­et scene as a na­tion­al crick­eter. We have great am­bi­tions for him, great ex­pec­ta­tions,” the MP said.

Mooni­lal en­cour­aged Sookdeo to con­tin­ue to make his moth­er and fam­i­ly proud.

“I want to say Tor­res, your mom would be ex­treme­ly proud of you. She would be ex­treme­ly hap­py at this mo­ment to know that her boy is on the na­tion­al crick­et team. All that you would do in crick­et and school, you must still make her proud.” —Sascha Wil­son