Derek Achong

Se­nior Re­porter

derek.achong@guardian.co.tt

A small busi­ness own­er wants the po­lice to in­crease pa­trols along the La­dy Young Road af­ter a Mar­aval woman and her 19-year-old daugh­ter were re­leased there af­ter be­ing kid­napped on Fri­day morn­ing. 

Rox­anne Smith-Alexan­der made the ap­peal hours af­ter 45-year-old Pet­ri­na Her­nan­dez and her daugh­ter Amelia Roberts were re­leased on a des­o­late road a short dis­tance from her veg­etable and food stall on the La­dy Young Road in Bel­mont. 

Smith-Alexan­der said her hus­band was lim­ing with friends in front of their busi­ness when one of them no­ticed a grey car speed­ing down the hill­side road that leads to a telecom­mu­ni­ca­tion tow­er fa­cil­i­ty. They then saw the two women, who were bare­foot and whose hands were tied, stum­bling to­wards them. 

“They came up to us and were bawl­ing ‘help, help, help’,” Smith-Alexan­der said. 

She and two fe­male friends at­tempt­ed to calm the moth­er and daugh­ter while her hus­band at­tempt­ed to con­tact the po­lice. 

“The young girl was trem­bling like she was ter­ri­fied,” Smith-Alexan­der re­called. 

She said af­ter the po­lice failed to re­spond to their calls, her hus­band and his friends tried to stop po­lice cars that were dri­ving past them pe­ri­od­i­cal­ly. One even­tu­al­ly stopped and turned around to in­ves­ti­gate. 

Her­nan­dez and her daugh­ter, who Smith-Alexan­der claimed did not ap­pear to have in­juries, were tak­en to a pri­vate hos­pi­tal in Port-of-Spain where they were ex­am­ined be­fore be­ing dis­charged. 

Smith-Alexan­der com­mend­ed the po­lice of­fi­cers for the way they dealt with the vic­tims. 

“The po­lice were very calm and were not try­ing to make a scene or any­thing,” she said. 

Asked whether the vic­tims re­vealed where they were be­ing held, Smith-Alexan­der said they told her they were blind­fold­ed be­fore they were dropped off. 

Smith-Alexan­der, who has three teenage daugh­ters, said the in­ci­dent had her fam­i­ly scared for their safe­ty. 

“They (the po­lice) used to pa­trol here day and night. There was al­so pri­vate se­cu­ri­ty but that stopped be­cause they prob­a­bly got robbed sev­er­al times,” she said. 

She said she was es­pe­cial­ly con­cerned for her safe­ty and that of her daugh­ters. 

“My chil­dren were watch­ing this and say­ing, ‘Mum­my we are not safe in this place’,” she said. 

Ac­cord­ing to po­lice re­ports, around 4 am on Fri­day, a group of armed men broke in­to the fam­i­ly’s home at An­dalu­sia Dri­ve, Mar­aval. The men are be­lieved to have ac­cessed the prop­er­ty, which is in a res­i­den­tial com­mu­ni­ty with a se­cu­ri­ty guard booth at the en­trance, us­ing the Mar­aval Riv­er at the back of the prop­er­ty. 

The moth­er and daugh­ter were blind­fold­ed, and the as­sailants ran­sacked the premis­es, tak­ing an undis­closed num­ber of items be­fore ab­duct­ing the women. The in­trud­ers stole three ve­hi­cles—a black Nis­san Ce­firo, a brown Hyundai Tus­con, and a sil­ver Toy­ota Yaris. Ini­tial re­ports were that the three ve­hi­cles were re­cov­ered on Fri­day but po­lice has since re­port­ed that up to late yes­ter­day, the ve­hi­cles had not been re­cov­ered.

The re­port of the kid­nap­ping was re­port­ed­ly made sev­er­al hours lat­er when Her­nan­dez did not re­port to work at her usu­al time and se­cu­ri­ty per­son­nel, sent by her col­leagues to check on her, found the house ran­sacked. A rel­a­tive of the two women, who is cur­rent­ly in the Unit­ed States, re­port­ed­ly re­ceived a call de­mand­ing a ran­som in US dol­lars. 

In a press re­lease late yes­ter­day, the T&T Po­lice Ser­vice (TTPS) said the women were re­leased when po­lice ramped up their in­ves­ti­ga­tion and pur­sued sev­er­al leads.  They checked CCTV footage, gath­ered in­tel­li­gence and used avail­able tech­nol­o­gy and were ac­tive­ly pur­su­ing cred­i­ble leads when the vic­tims were placed in an un­known ve­hi­cle and dropped off along the La­dy Young Road.

Po­lice said they re­ceived in­for­ma­tion around 7.45 pm on Fri­day and went to the lo­ca­tion where they found both women and took them to the St Clair Med­ical Health Fa­cil­i­ty. The vic­tims have since been re-unit­ed with fam­i­ly mem­bers and are in good health.

De­tec­tives from the West­ern Di­vi­sion, the An­ti-Kid­nap­ping Unit­ed (AKU) and the Spe­cial In­ves­ti­ga­tions Unit (SIU) are con­tin­u­ing in­ves­ti­ga­tions.

Per­sons with in­for­ma­tion that might as­sist in­ves­ti­ga­tors are asked to call 999, 911, 800-TIPS or any po­lice sta­tion.