Trini mom cries for son missing in Antigua

IN an emotional interview with Newsday, Candy Jageshar spoke about her missing 21-year-old son, Thomas Vasquez, who disappeared in Antigua on April 15, just one day after returning to the island for work.

Speaking through tears during a phone interview on April 30, Jageshar described her son as a carefree but deeply responsible young man. She insisted his silence was completely out of character.

Jageshar, who is in TT, said, "He is not lackadaisical: he always calls twice a day, sometimes more. If he's missing home, he’ll call three or four times a day. For him not to call at all... this is very, very unlike him.""

Vasquez, who works on a legal marijuana farm, regularly travels between both islands.

"He came to Trinidad on April 6 and left on April 14. On April 13, he called me and said, ‘Mommy, I’m going back.’ I asked him, ‘Already?’ He said yes. When he landed the next morning, his employer picked him up from the airport and took him straight to the farm."

Jageshar explained Vasquez had spent the night with a friend, who dropped him back at the farm in Glanville between 9 and 10 am on Tuesday, April 15. That was the last time anyone saw him.

She said Vasquez had no known conflicts or problems with anyone and she had not heard from the police either.

"They (the police) haven’t reached out to me. Not once. They've been in contact with a young woman, a friend of his, who was the one that called and told me he was missing. She’s the one who went to the police and filed the report. She has gone back to the station several times. But the police have not reached out to ask me anything."

Vasquez is Jageshar’s only son and eldest child. She has two daughters. During the interview, her voice often broke as she described how the family is struggling to cope.

"It’s very, very hard. Every night I try to sleep: I sleep for, like, half an hour. I wake up and can’t go back to sleep. I can only imagine what other families go through when they can’t find their loved ones. Now I’m living it, and it’s a feeling I can’t describe. It’s distressing I can’t eat."

She reflected on her relationship with her son, which grew stronger over the years.

"Whenever he called, he would say, ‘Mom, don’t worry. I’m okay. I love you.’ We didn’t have the best relationship when he was a teenager. Growing pains. But when he started working in Antigua, the distance brought us closer."

She paused before continuing, her voice soft and quiet.

"The space, the miles, the thousand miles between us brought us close. Because age brings reason."

She said as Vasquez matured, he began to understand the importance of family and tried to make amends.

"He celebrated his 21st birthday on March 21. Around that time, he started to change and whenever he spoke with his father on the phone, he would start to cry. In the last conversation we had, he said, ‘Mama, I love you, you know.’ And I told him, ‘Son, I love you too."

Jageshar said she often warned her son to be careful.

"Sometimes after we hung up on the phone, he would call back just to say it again. ‘Mom, I love you, you know.’ I just want to hear those words one more time,” she said before breaking down.

Asked if there had been any developments in the search, Jageshar said:

"No, nothing. There’s a group called concerned citizens who are doing physical searches. They searched on Monday, and they’re going back today to search the farm again where he worked. That’s all I know. I just wish I knew what else I could do."