RAD­HI­CA DE SIL­VA

Se­nior Mul­ti­me­dia Re­porter

rad­hi­ca.sookraj@guardian.co.tt

The body of O’delle Lal­man-Bap­tiste, the wife of a Point Fortin car deal­er, was found with stab wounds and her throat slit hours af­ter she was kid­napped dur­ing a rob­bery at Carlsen Field, Ch­agua­nas, late Fri­day night.

Po­lice be­lieve she may have been killed short­ly af­ter the ab­duc­tion. In­ves­ti­ga­tors are now pur­su­ing the pos­si­bil­i­ty that the killing was a planned hit.

Lal­man-Bap­tiste, a nurse at­tached to the South West Re­gion­al Health Au­thor­i­ty, was ab­duct­ed around 11 pm on Fri­day while trav­el­ling with her hus­band, Math­ias Bap­tiste, in a white Hyundai H-100 van (reg­is­tra­tion TEH 8727), val­ued at $167,000. The cou­ple had stopped along Hos­pi­tal Road, Carlsen Field, for Bap­tiste to uri­nate when a black Nis­san X-Trail with un­known reg­is­tra­tion pulled along­side them.

Two armed men, dressed in dark cloth­ing, ex­it­ed the ve­hi­cle and robbed Bap­tiste of $1,500 in cash, a black Sam­sung Galaxy A05 smart­phone val­ued at $1,200, and a white iPhone 16 worth $3,500. The sus­pects then forced Lal­man-Bap­tiste in­to the ve­hi­cle and drove off in a norther­ly di­rec­tion.

A re­port was filed with the Freeport Po­lice Sta­tion, and of­fi­cers re­spond­ed by vis­it­ing the scene, con­duct­ing in­ter­views, can­vass­ing for CCTV footage, and is­su­ing a flash alert via the Com­mand Cen­tre.

Us­ing GPS track­ing da­ta, of­fi­cers of the North Cen­tral Task Force lo­cat­ed the stolen ve­hi­cle along the Churchill Roo­sevelt High­way near the Max­i­mum Se­cu­ri­ty Prison. Up­on in­ter­cep­tion, a shootout oc­curred be­tween the po­lice and the sus­pects. One of the sus­pects was shot and tak­en to the Ari­ma Health Fa­cil­i­ty, where he was pro­nounced dead on ar­rival.

The sec­ond sus­pect es­caped on foot in an un­known di­rec­tion and re­mains at large.