Akash Sama­roo

Se­nior Re­porter

akash.sama­roo@cnc3.co.tt

The moth­er of mur­dered teenag­er Kay­lon Ja­cob at­tend­ed what would have been his grad­u­a­tion cer­e­mo­ny and made a fer­vent plea for those in at­ten­dance to re­ject a life of crime.

Yes­ter­day was a joy­ous oc­ca­sion of 825 young men and women at the North­ern Acad­e­my for the Per­form­ing Arts (NA­PA), as they re­ceived their diplo­mas from the Civil­ian Con­ser­va­tion Corps (CCC) fol­low­ing their 10-month pro­gramme. Dur­ing this time, they were ex­posed to var­i­ous vo­ca­tion­al train­ing pro­grammes from hair styling and bar­ber­ing to weld­ing and ma­son­ry. But the cheers of the grad­uands turned to re­spect­ful si­lence when they re­mem­bered that Kay­lon was not there to share in this ex­pe­ri­ence.

His moth­er, Ker­ry-Ann Ja­cob, took to the podi­um to pay trib­ute to her 18-year-old son, who was shot dead in Ju­ly af­ter leav­ing his home to de­liv­er food.

“My son Kay­lon Kashif Ja­cob was ac­cept­ed in­to the CCC pro­gramme in Feb­ru­ary of this year as part of the north-cen­tral re­gion’s bar­ber­ing team. He would have been sit­ting amongst you all anx­ious­ly wait­ing to re­ceive his cer­tifi­cate. Un­for­tu­nate­ly my son’s life was cut short on Sat­ur­day Ju­ly 22,” Ja­cob said.

At this point in her speech, Ker­ry-Ann strug­gled to com­pose her­self but per­se­vered af­ter a few sec­onds. Dur­ing this time, the grad­uands who were seat­ed, stood up out of re­spect. A mem­ber of the De­fence Force stood next to her on the podi­um and could be heard faint­ly say­ing, “Breathe and ex­hale, breathe and ex­hale.”

“My son Kay­lon was a child of grace and courage with a stub­born streak that showed up when he set his mind to some­thing. This was ev­i­dent in the way he con­duct­ed him­self in open­ing his busi­ness. He was adamant on nev­er work­ing for any­one,” Ja­cob ex­plained.

She urged the grad­uands to be in­spired by his vi­brant and lov­ing per­son­al­i­ty.

“With his pass­ing, Kay­lon left be­hind a lega­cy of kind­ness, com­pas­sion and gen­eros­i­ty,” she added.

Ja­cob told the young grad­uands that as they set off in­to the work­ing world, life will not al­ways be easy. She warned that even though her son was not in­volved with any crim­i­nal gangs, crime is om­nipresent, and chances are some of them will be faced with a choice.

“Most of you young men sit­ting here will be faced with gang vi­o­lence at some point. But you have the pow­er to say no longer will I ac­cept vi­o­lence. You can turn your pain in­to ac­tion.

“What you de­cide to­day can save a life to­mor­row. Gun vi­o­lence is too big, too pow­er­ful to stop but not big enough for you to take ac­tion and de­cide what you can live with,” Ja­cob plead­ed.

Fol­low­ing her pas­sion­ate plea, Niziah Thomas, a CCC grad­u­ate, shared his sto­ry about his bat­tle with over­com­ing crime and forg­ing a new path for him­self.

“Dur­ing the first week of the in­duc­tion phase, a ran­dom search took place, where I was found with mar­i­jua­na in my book bag. I was tak­en to the of­fice where the po­lice got in­volved. I was then tak­en to the Ari­ma Po­lice Sta­tion, where I was charged with traf­fick­ing on a school com­pound,” Thomas said, tak­ing a mo­ment to com­pose him­self.

“I spent an en­tire day and night in the hold­ing cell. While in the hold­ing cell I start­ed to plead with God for a sec­ond chance and to find my­self back on the right path. I hope you all are lis­ten­ing be­cause your mis­take may not turn out as good as mine did,” Thomas told his fel­low class­mates.

Thomas said his fa­ther plead­ed with the CCC to re-en­rol him in­to the pro­gramme. He said on his re­turn he did not on­ly fo­cus on his au­to­mo­tive tech­nol­o­gy train­ing but took part in the CCC’s ca­lyp­so and ole’ mas com­pe­ti­tion, plac­ing third and first re­spec­tive­ly. He al­so com­plet­ed his 150 hours of court-or­dered com­mu­ni­ty ser­vice on No­vem­ber 8.

“And last but not least, I want to thank me, I want to thank me for be­liev­ing in me. I want to thank me for not giv­ing up on me. I want to thank me for be­ing the most im­proved stu­dent in CCC. I want to thank me for mak­ing the sac­ri­fices that were nec­es­sary and from this day for­ward, I will be a suc­cess,” Thomas said to tu­mul­tuous ap­plause.