A stock­yard own­er was kid­napped in Ch­agua­nas yes­ter­day af­ter­noon, min­utes af­ter he ar­rived to de­liv­er a load of sand for a cus­tomer.

Po­lice said Shashi Anand Ram­per­sad was tak­en by two masked, armed men around 2 pm, who bun­dled him in­to a car at Pierre Street, Lendore Vil­lage, En­ter­prise.

Ram­per­sad re­port­ed­ly ar­rived in the area around 1.45 pm and re­versed his FU­SO Can­ter truck in the open yard of one of the res­i­dents and got out, leav­ing the keys in the ig­ni­tion and his cell­phone on the seat as the truck idled.

Res­i­dent Her­man Adams said he was stunned at how quick­ly the sit­u­a­tion un­fold­ed.

He re­called chat­ting with Ram­per­sad who had lament­ed how hard busi­ness had be­come since peo­ple were not buy­ing like be­fore.

As Adams went in­side, he said, “He (Ram­per­sad) went across by my neigh­bour to talk be­cause we all know him from the com­mu­ni­ty and while he was talk­ing to the gen­tle­man there, a car pull up with some guys, they jump out with mask and thing, and take him and put him in­to the car.”

He de­scribed Ram­per­sad as a, “very cool, lov­ing fel­la, a peo­ple per­son. A good fel­la in the neigh­bour­hood, every­body know him, nice fel­la.”

Adams said he quick­ly alert­ed the po­lice.

He said he and oth­er res­i­dents who knew Ram­per­sad would be say­ing prayers for his safe re­turn.

On the is­sue of crime, he lament­ed, “It reach home ... in front my door.”

When Guardian Me­dia vis­it­ed the area, Ram­per­sad’s truck was seen idling yes­ter­day, and res­i­dents said they were in­struct­ed by po­lice not to touch the ve­hi­cle.

Ch­agua­nas East MP Van­dana Mo­hit is­sued a state­ment two hours af­ter the kid­nap­ping, call­ing for ac­tion on crime.

“A clear man­i­fes­ta­tion of the present gov­ern­ment’s to­tal in­abil­i­ty to stem the run­away crime sit­u­a­tion in the Ch­agua­nas area and the coun­try at large.”

She blast­ed Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter Fitzger­ald Hinds, ac­cus­ing him of be­ing un­able to im­ple­ment what she de­scribed as any dis­cernible, con­crete or proac­tive strate­gies to curb the ram­pant es­ca­la­tion of se­ri­ous crimes with­in and across the Ch­agua­nas East con­stituen­cy.

Mo­hit said, “The Prime Min­is­ter’s con­tin­ued ill-fat­ed con­fi­dence re­posed in this cur­rent Min­is­ter of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty has em­bold­ened crim­i­nals who feel se­cure and they have sim­ply height­ened their ac­tiv­i­ties through his in­com­pe­tence. It is not too late to fire the Min­is­ter of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty which may send a strong sig­nal to crim­i­nals that it can­not be busi­ness (crime) as usu­al.”