Ak­ile Si­mon

?Dog-nap­pers have re­port­ed­ly de­mand­ed a $10,000 ran­som for the safe re­turn of a Great Dane, which was stolen from the Small An­i­mals Vet­eri­nar­i­an Clin­ic at the Er­ic Williams Med­ical Sci­ences Com­plex, last Sat­ur­day. Ac­cord­ing to po­lice, the Swedish dog was dis­cov­ered miss­ing from the fa­cil­i­ty on Sat­ur­day, when its own­er, Richards As­b­jorn­jen, an ex­ec­u­tive of Port-of-Spain, vis­it­ed the clin­ic. As­b­jorn­jen re­port­ed to po­lice he was told by a doc­tor that his dog, Har­ry, could not be found. Har­ry was left at the fa­cil­i­ty last Mon­day to un­der­go a rou­tine pro­ce­dure.

A re­port was made to the po­lice and a team of of­fi­cers from St Joseph sta­tion, led by Cpl Khan, vis­it­ed the scene and start­ed in­quiries. Af­ter view­ing sev­er­al sur­veil­lance tapes on the com­pound, po­lice were able to iden­ti­fy a man leav­ing the premis­es with the dog, around 7.49 am on Sat­ur­day. The 31-year-old sus­pect, who was lat­er held at his Mt D'or Road, Champs Fleurs home, was de­scribed by of­fi­cers as a known dog thief.

He told of­fi­cers he went to the area where he lived with the dog and was struck with a brick on the head by an­oth­er man, who stole the dog from him. The sec­ond thief, re­ports said, went in­to the San Juan area with the dog and was ap­proached by a busi­ness­man who want­ed to pur­chase the an­i­mal. As­b­jorn­jen and the po­lice were con­tact­ed lat­er, and the dog, val­ued at $45,000, was re­turned to his care. A video of the man steal­ing the dog from the hos­pi­tal was al­ready post­ed on YouTube and oth­er In­ter­net chat sites.