Candlelight vigil for Angelica this evening

Res­i­dents of Bar­rack­pore are ex­pect­ed to turn out in their num­bers this evening for a can­dle­light vig­il in mem­o­ry of sev­en-year-old An­gel­i­ca Saydee Jo­gie, whose life was trag­i­cal­ly cut short in a jet ski in­ci­dent in To­ba­go last week.

The vig­il, or­gan­ised by the Be­liev­ers As­sem­bly Church and the Satya­narayan Hin­du Tem­ple in col­lab­o­ra­tion with mem­bers of the com­mu­ni­ty, will be­gin at 7 pm at the Cot­tage Road Junc­tion. From there, par­tic­i­pants will walk in a solemn pro­ces­sion to the home of An­gel­i­ca’s fa­ther, Arnold Jo­gie, where a short in­ter­faith ser­vice will be held.

Or­gan­is­ers say the event is in­tend­ed not on­ly as a trib­ute to the young girl, but al­so as a mo­ment of uni­ty and re­flec­tion for a griev­ing com­mu­ni­ty. Res­i­dents have been in­vit­ed to bring can­dles or deeyas as they ho­n­our An­gel­i­ca, who has been fond­ly de­scribed by rel­a­tives and friends as a “dear­ly de­part­ed princess.” Stu­dents of San Fer­nan­do TML Pri­ma­ry School are al­so ex­pect­ed to at­tend the vig­il.

An­gel­i­ca died on Wednes­day af­ter be­ing struck by a jet ski at Pi­geon Point, To­ba­go, where she had been va­ca­tion­ing with her fam­i­ly for the East­er hol­i­days. Ac­cord­ing to re­ports, the child was in­side a clear­ly des­ig­nat­ed bathing area when a jet ski en­tered the re­strict­ed zone around 4.30 pm and col­lid­ed with her and oth­er rel­a­tives.

De­spite the im­me­di­ate re­sponse from life­guards and mem­bers of the pub­lic, who ad­min­is­tered car­diopul­monary re­sus­ci­ta­tion at the scene, An­gel­i­ca lat­er died at the Scar­bor­ough Gen­er­al Hos­pi­tal. The op­er­a­tor of the jet ski re­port­ed­ly fled the scene fol­low­ing the in­ci­dent. How­ev­er, an ar­rest was made by the po­lice hours lat­er.

An­gel­i­ca’s death has sparked na­tion­al out­rage and re­newed scruti­ny over the safe­ty of ma­rine recre­ation­al ac­tiv­i­ties, par­tic­u­lar­ly in pop­u­lar tourist ar­eas.

In a state­ment is­sued this week, Sec­re­tary of the Safe­ty Coun­cil of Trinidad and To­ba­go, Hazel Mo­han-George, ex­tend­ed con­do­lences to the griev­ing fam­i­ly, de­scrib­ing the in­ci­dent as a “pro­found hu­man tragedy” that has shak­en pub­lic con­fi­dence.

She said the cir­cum­stances sur­round­ing the in­ci­dent point to a break­down in crit­i­cal safe­ty sys­tems de­signed to sep­a­rate high-speed wa­ter­craft from bathers. “Des­ig­nat­ed swim­ming zones ex­ist specif­i­cal­ly to pre­vent such in­ter­ac­tions. When these bound­aries are breached, the con­se­quences can be im­me­di­ate and dev­as­tat­ing,” the state­ment not­ed.

The Coun­cil em­pha­sised that such in­ci­dents are pre­ventable if prop­er risk man­age­ment mea­sures are en­forced. Mo­han-George al­so called for tighter reg­u­la­tion of jet ski op­er­a­tors, in­clud­ing manda­to­ry train­ing, li­cens­ing, and ad­her­ence to des­ig­nat­ed op­er­at­ing ar­eas. She stressed that ef­fec­tive over­sight is cru­cial to en­sur­ing the safe co­ex­is­tence of com­mer­cial ac­tiv­i­ty and pub­lic recre­ation.

“The loss of a child in a pro­tect­ed bathing area must serve as a cat­a­lyst for strength­en­ing reg­u­la­to­ry frame­works and reaf­firm­ing a na­tion­al com­mit­ment to safe­ty,” she said.

– RAD­HI­CA DE SIL­VA