The out­pour­ing of love shown to Laven­tille pop­corn ven­dor, Kevin Thomas by com­plete strangers has been so in­spir­ing that Thomas is now call­ing on wider T&T to con­tin­ue to sup­port strug­gling youths who want to live re­spectable, de­cent lives.

Thomas's call came af­ter sev­er­al peo­ple of­fered to pay his $600 fine af­ter he was charged by po­lice for un­law­ful­ly pitch­ing a stall, sell­ing with­out a li­cense and ob­struc­tion of a pas­sage­way on the street.

In an ex­clu­sive in­ter­view with Guardian Me­dia, Thomas said he has been try­ing to earn an hon­est liv­ing since he came out of prison nine months ago, hav­ing served an 18-month sen­tence for pos­ses­sion of a stolen ve­hi­cle.

Thomas said af­ter his sen­tence he tried look­ing for a job but peo­ple did not want to hire him once they heard he was from Laven­tille.

"As soon as peo­ple hear you're from Laven­tille they ei­ther choose not to hire you of if they do, they are al­ways watch­ing you be­cause trust is not there," Thomas said.

Say­ing he was try­ing his best to do some­thing good with his life, Thomas added, " It is eas­i­er to do wrong things than do­ing the right thing. Do­ing the wrong thing is easy and some peo­ple glo­ri­fy you, but when you try to do the right thing peo­ple chas­tise you and bring up things about your past and this makes it very hard."

He not­ed that de­spite the strug­gle, he was de­ter­mined to make it in life.

"I am work­ing hard to sell pop­corn the right way but I al­so want the op­por­tu­ni­ty to be re­spect­ed. Maybe I can get a job. I don't know. This went world­wide and I am so hap­py that so many com­plete strangers cared about me. It says a lot about our peo­ple," he added.

Thomas was ar­rest­ed by mu­nic­i­pal po­lice on Tues­day and charged. The mag­is­trate felt sym­pa­thy when he ex­plained his predica­ment and gave him a $600 fine.