Last Saturday’s deadline for the payment of a US$40,000 ransom has come and gone for the safe return of Moruga cousins Kendall Singh and Kenrick Morgan from Venezuela.
However, their kidnappers have renegotiated their demands and are now calling for US$20,000 and five iPhones.
Kendall’s brother, Peter Singh, told Guardian Media that he got a call from Kendall last Sunday, saying that he and Morgan were all right, but needed the money for the safe return from their Venezuelan abductors.
He then spoke to the kidnapper, who demanded the cash and cell phones by Wednesday. Peter said the kidnapper was supposed to call back on Wednesday, but up to noon Thursday, the families had no contact with them.
Meanwhile, the families were busily calling relatives and friends, hoping to raise enough money to pay the kidnappers. But they were losing hope as Peter said money is hard to come by for his family and US currency would be even harder.
“I spoke to the youth man and my brother. As long as the kidnapper call, I want to hear from them because I need to know that they are alive. On Sunday, I spoke to my brother, my little cousin and a Spanish man who speaks English. The Spanish man told me ‘Allyuh organise the money and we want five iPhones.’ I said right now we are scraping up because we don’t have that money they’ve asked for,” Peter said.
Usually, the kidnapper would call via WhatsApp but on Sunday, Peter got the phone call from a Digicel phone. He said because the river month in Venezuela is so close to Trinidad, you can get a signal while on a boat.
Police said they were also awaiting further information on the status of the men, but it is an international ordeal that would involve other authorities.
Their report stated that on January 12, Kendall, a 23-year-old fisherman of Basse Terre, and Morgan, 17, of Grand Chemin, a Form Five student of the Moruga Secondary School, were fishing off the Moruga coast.
They were kidnapped and taken to Venezuela.
