RAD­HI­CA DE SIL­VA

rad­hi­ca.sookraj@guardian.co.tt

Ea­ger to get a last view of Dr Leroy “Black Stal­in” Cal­liste’s body, a mob of peo­ple tried to en­ter the South­ern Acad­e­my for the Per­form­ing Arts yes­ter­day.

But they were held back by SAPA se­cu­ri­ty of­fi­cers, who still ap­peared to have a dif­fi­cult time keep­ing them at bay.

As the fu­ner­al ser­vice start­ed, a mob of mourn­ers pushed at the glass doors in an at­tempt to gain ac­cess for a last chance to pay trib­ute to the ca­lyp­so leg­end.

One se­cu­ri­ty guard was heard shout­ing: “I will forcibly re­move you. Push­ing on the door is not go­ing to help any­body. Please move away thank you.”

But the mob per­sist­ed, forc­ing the guard to make a pub­lic an­nounce­ment.

“It is closed to the pub­lic now. There is no seat­ing for the pub­lic,” he ad­vised.

The crowds even­tu­al­ly spilled over in­to the street but the po­lice, led by Se­nior Supt Ce­cil San­tana from the Mu­nic­i­pal Po­lice, worked swift­ly to clear the street.

The wreck­ers al­so worked over­time. It was im­per­a­tive to have the zone around SAPA clear to fa­cil­i­tate the dis­missal of the schools. There are sev­en schools near the venue and po­lice were de­ter­mined to avert a traf­fic jam.

School of­fi­cials at AS­JA Girls’ Col­lege and AS­JA Boys’ dis­missed school ear­li­er.

Across La­dy Hailes Av­enue, scores of res­i­dents from the Em­ba­cadere build­ings wait­ed to cross the road to en­ter SAPA, even though there was no space.

To them, this was a last chance to say farewell to their hero.

“You know how many times in my dark­est mo­ment, I lis­ten to Stal­in’s song Bet­ter Days are com­ing,” Pearl Clarke said.

Out­side SAPA, sev­er­al ven­dors sold sno-cones and lol­lies. By noon, the rains had cleared up and the blis­ter­ing sun dried out the sur­round­ings.

Dig­ni­taries, in­clud­ing Min­is­ter of Agri­cul­ture Kaz­im Ho­sein, Tourism Min­is­ter Ran­dall Mitchell, Hous­ing Min­is­ter Pen­ne­lope Beck­les and Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter Fitzger­ald Hinds, at­tend­ed the fu­ner­al.