The Car­ni­val cel­e­bra­tions turned out to be a time of mourn­ing for a young box­er’s fam­i­ly and the en­tire box­ing fra­ter­ni­ty.

Eigh­teen-year-old box­er Prince Charles was stabbed to death on Tues­day in front of the KFC restau­rant as he found him­self in a scuf­fle with per­sons known to him and the en­tire San­gre Grande com­mu­ni­ty.

Un­con­firmed re­ports state the box­er was al­leged­ly stabbed in the neck a few times by a rel­a­tive of some­one who he had a close re­la­tion­ship with.

Charles, who turned 18 years in Jan­u­ary and had been a fix­ture on the T&T teams for the schools Boys and Girls team for the Caribbean School­boys/girls Cham­pi­onships, as well as the coun­try’s youth teams, where he won a num­ber of medals for his per­for­mances.

The box­er’s el­der sis­ter, who did not want to be iden­ti­fied, said yes­ter­day that she on­ly wants jus­tice for her broth­er.

She de­scribed her broth­er as a hard work­er who al­ways did some­thing pro­duc­tive to earn an in­come for him­self and his sib­lings. He was one of five sib­lings of the Guaico fam­i­ly.

“You could ask any­one in the com­mu­ni­ty about my broth­er, and they would have noth­ing bad to say about him be­cause he is al­ways on the go, do­ing some­thing pos­i­tive. He used to rear chick­ens, ducks, rab­bits, and oth­er an­i­mals to make mon­ey; he is al­ways do­ing some­thing con­struc­tive for him­self,” his sis­ter claimed.

Ce­cil Forde, pres­i­dent of the T&T Box­ing As­so­ci­a­tion, said yes­ter­day that the en­tire in­ci­dent could have been pre­vent­ed had Charles not been away from the sport for a short while.

He was a mem­ber of the Bio­mel Box­ing Gym in that area, which be­came in­ac­tive fol­low­ing the death of coach Mer­ril Si­mon last year.

Ac­cord­ing to Forde, up­on the death of the coach, the gym was closed, and the 25-plus young peo­ple who trained there went their sep­a­rate ways.

“Some stayed in the sport, such as Jadon Castel­lano, who won a gold medal at the re­cent Caribbean Box­ing Cham­pi­onships in St Lu­cia at the week­end, while oth­ers stayed in­ac­tive like Charles,” Forde ex­plained.

Forde said Charles would have been on that team had he been train­ing.

Charles gained much-need­ed ex­pe­ri­ence at the World Ju­nior Cham­pi­onships in Ar­me­nia last year when he was beat­en by Eu­ro­pean cham­pi­on Em­manouil Fo­tiadis of Greece in the Ju­nior Men’s 60-63 kg Light wel­ter­weight con­test at the Yere­van Mi­ka Sports Are­na.

Ac­cord­ing to Forde, “Prince Charles boxed as a school­boy; he boxed as a ju­nior, and then he was a youth box­er, so he was with us for that dis­tance. He came from Bio­mel in San­gre Grande, but since Mer­ril Si­mon passed away, the gym closed down, so if he was train­ing, he would have been on the team to go to St Lu­cia for the Caribbean Box­ing Cham­pi­onships.

“We have a coach in San­gre Grande where they have a lit­tle thing go­ing on in the sa­van­nah as we look for a prop­er place to open up a gym. But if he was train­ing, he would have been out­side the coun­try, so we need to get a lot of the kids up by Mer­ril and them; we need to get some­thing hap­pen­ing be­cause Mer­ril had over 25 lit­tle box­ers, and right now they’re in and out be­cause they don’t have a prop­er place to train.”