CARISA LEE

Re­porter

carisa.lee@cnc3.co.tt

The moth­er of a 21-year-old man who has been miss­ing in An­tigua and Bar­bu­da for the last 22 days is ap­peal­ing to any­one with in­for­ma­tion to speak up.

Can­dy Jage­shar Vasquez said her son, Thomas Jage­shar, spent the last nine months trav­el­ling back and forth to the Caribbean is­land to work on a mar­i­jua­na farm. She said the last time he re­turned home was on April 6 be­cause his work per­mit ex­pired but he left one week lat­er (April 13).

“I know he go­ing Mon­day morn­ing. I ask him what time, he said ‘Mum­my by 9 o’clock I should be in An­tigua’. So I see 10 o’clock, 11 o’clock go­ing so I mes­sage him but the mes­sage had on­ly one tick,” she re­vealed.

Jage­shar Vasquez said she was lat­er in­formed by one of his friends in Trinidad that he ar­rived at his des­ti­na­tion safe­ly but lost his phone the night be­fore his trip.

The moth­er of one said she did not see that as a red flag be­cause he of­ten lost his cell­phones. Since then, how­ev­er, she said has re­ceived lim­it­ed in­for­ma­tion on her son’s where­abouts.

She said she knew he used some­one’s cell­phone to call his two friends in An­tigua to let them know he was back there. Jage­shar Vasquez said she was told her son spent was dropped off where he worked the next morn­ing af­ter ar­riv­ing on the is­land.

“They took him back to the farm Tues­day morn­ing around 9 or 10 since af­ter that, that was the last time that any­body has ever seen or heard from him,” she said.

She con­firmed that since his dis­ap­pear­ance, his em­ploy­er and the friends who dropped him to the farm had been ques­tioned by po­lice. The wor­ried moth­er said a group called Con­cerned Cit­i­zens of A&B have been help­ing with the ap­prox­i­mate­ly 3,000-mile search. How­ev­er, she has been un­able to join due to lack of doc­u­men­ta­tion and funds.

“An­tigua po­lice have not con­tact­ed me, no one from An­tigua, the com­mis­sion­er, the At­tor­ney Gen­er­al, no­body has called me and told me any­thing con­cern­ing my son... I’ve reached out,” she said.

At a me­dia con­fer­ence last week, An­tigua’s act­ing Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice Ever­ton Jef­fers plead­ed with the pub­lic to help them find the 21-year-old. Deputy po­lice com­mis­sion­er Wade Al­bert SNR added that a full com­ple­ment of of­fi­cers would be de­ployed in­to a unit to search for the miss­ing man.

Guardian Me­dia reached out to new Min­is­ter of For­eign and Cari­com Af­fairs, Sean Sobers, who con­firmed that the Min­istry asked for a sta­tus up­date on the mat­ter and would com­mu­ni­cate with Jage­shar’s moth­er when more in­for­ma­tion was forth­com­ing.