Ak­ile Si­mon

A ten-year-old Diego Mar­tin school­girl was sub­ject­ed to three hours of ter­ror, af­ter she was ab­duct­ed and tak­en for a "joyride" be­fore be­ing re­leased by a man pos­ing as a 'PH' dri­ver on Sat­ur­day af­ter­noon. The in­ci­dent caused much pan­ic among the rel­a­tives of Reneca Ghent, who feared the worst, as they hoped and prayed for the girl's safe re­lease. Ac­cord­ing to rel­a­tives, the ab­duc­tion took place mere me­tres from Ghent's Vespree Lane home, as she was about to dis­em­bark a PH taxi, in which she and her grand­moth­er, Lor­na Pen­co, were pas­sen­gers. Rel­a­tives have since is­sued a warn­ing to mem­bers of the pub­lic to be on the look­out for the sus­pect, who they be­lieve may be a sex preda­tor, lurk­ing for un­sus­pect­ed chil­dren. The man, rel­a­tives be­lieved, took Reneca to Fort George and threat­ened to throw her off a cliff if she raised an alarm, but if she be­haved, he would take her home. Reneca re­mem­bered see­ing a school in St James, mo­ments be­fore the ve­hi­cle pro­ceed­ed up a hill, her aunt Er­i­ca St Louis said, dur­ing an in­ter­view at her Diego Mar­tin home yes­ter­day.

Dur­ing the or­deal, the girl was or­dered to lie on the back seat of the ve­hi­cle and told not to move. "This man is a preda­tor and I be­lieve he did this be­fore and would do it again...The next per­son he tar­gets may not be as lucky as we were," St Louis said. "He could prob­a­bly be in­volved in some of the miss­ing girls' cas­es be­cause there are too many girls miss­ing now. "If you know you neigh­bour has a dark blue Wing Road (mo­tor car), re­port it to the po­lice, just as a mat­ter of pre­cau­tion. "Don't take it as an of­fence, be­cause you would be as­sist­ing in get­ting this dan­ger­ous man off the streets." She said the man promised Reneca mon­ey and he would check her by her school. "I find it was very brazen of him to do this," St Louis said. She al­so called on any­one who may have as­sist­ed the sus­pect in get­ting his car out of a hole to come for­ward.

"Reneca said the car got stuck in a hole while com­ing down the hill and he put the car seat on top of her and told her to be very qui­et," she said. "Some­body as­sist­ed him in get­ting out the hole." Pen­co said she and Reneca board­ed the car on Tra­garete Road, Port-of-Spain, and asked to be tak­en to Gopaul Av­enue. Pen­co said the ve­hi­cle stopped near Gopaul Av­enue and she came out of the front pas­sen­ger seat, but Reneca could not get out from the back seat be­cause the door would not open. She said she told the dri­ver to pull on­to the curb, so Reneca could use the oth­er door to ex­it, which was much safer. "The man just dri­ve off and gone with the child," Pen­co said. She said she called her cell­phone which was in Reneca's pos­ses­sion and asked the child where she was. "She said, 'Granny I don't know,'" Pen­co said. Ac­cord­ing to the 65-year-old woman, she spoke with the dri­ver over the phone, who said he need­ed to get a code to open the car door.

"I ask him where he was and he said he didn't know," she said. "I then told him that I just came from the po­lice sta­tion and I gave the po­lice his car num­ber, colour and a de­scrip­tion of him. "The man said, 'What you gone by the po­lice for? I bring­ing the child now.'" She said the phone was lat­er switched off. Pen­co said the child's god­moth­er saw the ve­hi­cle dri­ve by, and the dri­ver "push­ing down a child's head, but she didn't known it was Reneca. He lat­er dropped her off at the Rich Plain gas sta­tion. "She (Reneca) said, 'Granny I was so fright­en so I de­cid­ed to run home,'" Pen­co said. "I be­lieve she was saved when I told him that I had giv­en his in­for­ma­tion to the po­lice." "Nev­er me again...I not even go­ing to trav­el in an 'H' taxi af­ter what hap­pened to me and my grand­daugh­ter," Pen­co said.