Shar­lene Ram­per­sad

Scared that she might be­come an­oth­er rape sta­tis­tic, a San Juan woman jumped from a mov­ing "PH" taxi on Tues­day af­ter the dri­ver be­gan curs­ing and threat­en­ing her with a ba­ton.

A still trau­ma­tised Lin­da Asevero, 35, cau­tioned oth­er women yes­ter­day as she re­lat­ed the ter­ror she felt af­ter the man picked her up, veered off route and re­fused to stop the car when she be­gan to ask point­ed ques­tions.

She told the T&T Guardian she left her home for work around 8.10 am that day and got in­to the PH car af­ter wait­ing around 20 min­utes for a le­git­i­mate taxi. And she would not have been in the sit­u­a­tion had her ve­hi­cle not been un­der­go­ing re­pairs.

"My car broke down over the week­end and I have to trav­el this week but it was get­ting late for work and I wasn't see­ing any cars I know," she said.

"I saw this PH taxi and he asked me if I was go­ing to the Croisee in San Juan.

"The way he talk, I thought he al­ways worked the route but be­cause of how long I didn't trav­el, I didn't know him."

Asevero said when the man ini­tial­ly drove off route on­to Bound­ary Road, she thought lit­tle of it as she knew dri­vers of­ten used that road to es­cape rush hour traf­fic.

But she said short­ly af­ter, the man turned in­to an­oth­er sec­ondary road.

"I didn't know where that road would take us, so I start­ed to ask him 'Dri­ve, where you car­ry­ing me?"

Asevero said she asked the dri­ver sev­er­al times be­fore she said he re­spond­ed: "Alyuh so does look to cause trou­ble, why the *ex­ple­tive* you doh shut up?"

Asevero said she was shocked.

"I start­ed to get fright­ened and I ask him what he talk­ing about and he said 'You doh know I is ah po­lice owah? You wah meh give yuh some­thing?'"

But her fright then turned to hor­ror as the man pulled a ba­ton from be­neath his seat and be­gan ges­tic­u­lat­ing with it.

"I was so scared, I couldn't think... I just threw open the door and jumped out," she said.

She said she was able to stay on her feet de­spite jump­ing from the mov­ing car and ran away. She then made her way to the Barataria Po­lice Sta­tion where she filed a re­port.

She shared her sto­ry on Face­book on Tues­day evening, hop­ing to save an­oth­er woman from ex­pe­ri­enc­ing what she went through.

"I don't want any­one else to go through what I went through. Look­ing back any­thing could have hap­pened to me. I had no idea that some­one would be­have like that in broad day­light... the win­dows in his car was down when he picked me up and I thought I would have been safe go­ing with him."

There have been sev­er­al re­ports of ei­ther "PH" dri­vers rob­bing and rap­ing fe­male vic­tims, or men pos­ing as pas­sen­gers in ve­hi­cles, both "PH" and taxis, to do the same, in re­cent months.

There have been nu­mer­ous re­ports in cen­tral Trinidad where po­lice have warned fe­male trav­ellers to be ex­tra care­ful.

Con­tact­ed yes­ter­day, an of­fi­cer con­firmed that Asevero had made a re­port. Asked if there was an in­ves­ti­ga­tion in­to the in­ci­dent, the of­fi­cer said one could not hear on­ly one side of the sto­ry and run with it. He de­clined to com­ment fur­ther on the mat­ter.