Trinidad: Cricket umpire Carlton Best killed by carjackers

(Trinidad Guardian) The lo­cal crick­et­ing fra­ter­ni­ty was thrown in­to shock with the news that crick­et um­pire Carl­ton Best was killed by rob­bers at the age of 38.

It is un­der­stood that Best a res­i­dent of San­gre Grande went miss­ing two days ago and his rel­a­tives re­port­ed this to the po­lice who went in search of him. A body was found just af­ter mid­night on Wednes­day in the Aranguez area and his rel­a­tives were called in to iden­ti­fy. To their hor­ror it was Carl­ton and an au­top­sy has been or­dered for Fri­day to de­ter­mine the cause of his death.

 
It is al­leged that he was robbed of his Nis­san Syl­phy ve­hi­cle and thrown out of it. Po­lice in­di­cat­ed that there were no marks on vi­o­lence on his per­son, so the au­top­sy will de­ter­mine the cause of death of the soft-spo­ken taxi dri­ver.

Pres­i­dent of the T&T Crick­et Board (TTCB), Az­im Bas­sarath in an im­me­di­ate re­sponse said it was a sad day for the crick­et­ing fam­i­ly. “We are deeply sad­dened by the news of Carl­ton’s pass­ing.” Bas­sarath who was a for­mer um­pire said that Best had a bright fu­ture ahead of him. “We all knew of his worth as an um­pire. He was ded­i­cat­ed to the craft and was mak­ing great strides and this will leave all of us poor­er. We want to take this time to wish his fam­i­ly God’s bless­ings and com­fort at this time.”

The San­gre Grande Sports com­mu­ni­ty ex­tends sin­cere con­do­lences to the fam­i­ly, friends and the crick­et­ing fra­ter­ni­ty, on the pass­ing our re­gion’s Um­pire Carl­ton Best. Your defin­ing mo­ment was when you made us all proud by plac­ing 3rd in the Caribbean with a score of 97% in the 2017 West In­di­an Crick­et Um­pires As­so­ci­a­tion (WICUA) Prac­ti­cal and Oral Ex­am­i­na­tions. Your lega­cy will live on.

His friends on Face­book is al­so pay­ing trib­ute to him.