A 23-year-old man from Cap-De-Ville, Point Fortin, was tak­en in­to cus­tody yes­ter­day, fol­low­ing his botched at­tempt at a kid­nap­ping of a 10-year-old school child.

Ac­cord­ing to re­ports, mem­bers of the Point Fortin Mu­nic­i­pal Po­lice were in­stru­men­tal in his ar­rest.

A state­ment from the Min­istry of Rur­al De­vel­op­ment and Lo­cal Gov­ern­ment says at about 8am on Wednes­day 12th Feb­ru­ary, a Stan­dard Three stu­dent of the Fan­ny Vil­lage Gov­ern­ment School was walk­ing along the Guapo / Cap-De-Ville Main Road, when a black van dri­ven by a man of “East In­di­an de­scent with long hair” stopped along­side her. The man at­tempt­ed to pull the child in­to the ve­hi­cle.

A by-stander raised an alarm, caus­ing the man to re­turn to his ve­hi­cle and hur­ried­ly flee the scene. Wit­ness­es ac­com­pa­nied the vic­tim to the Fan­ny Vil­lage Gov­ern­ment School where WPC Thomas-Rouse of the Point Fortin Po­lice Sta­tion con­duct­ed an in­ter­view and re­ceived in­for­ma­tion, which proved crit­i­cal to the in­ves­ti­ga­tion.

Re­ports are that the vic­tim and her moth­er were tak­en to the Point Fortin Po­lice Sta­tion where an of­fi­cial re­port was made.

The min­istry’s re­lease says of­fi­cers of the Point Fortin Mu­nic­i­pal Po­lice con­tin­ued in­ves­ti­ga­tions, re­viewed cam­era footage and a short while lat­er, ar­rest­ed the sus­pect.

A black Isuzu pick-up van, which is be­lieved to be the ve­hi­cle used in the at­tempt­ed kid­nap­ping, was found and seized.

The sus­pect, along with the ve­hi­cle, were hand­ed over to of­fi­cers of the Point Fortin Po­lice Sta­tion.

The Min­is­ter of Rur­al De­vel­op­ment and Lo­cal Gov­ern­ment, Sen­a­tor Kaz­im Ho­sein, com­mend­ed the swift re­sponse of the Point Fortin Mu­nic­i­pal Po­lice and the Trinidad and To­ba­go Po­lice Ser­vice (TTPS) say­ing:

“This is in­deed good news. Well-de­served com­men­da­tion to the Mu­nic­i­pal Po­lice and the TTPS at­tached to the bor­ough of Point Fortin,” the min­is­ter said. “This joint ef­fort is ex­act­ly what we need in or­der to en­sure that our cit­i­zens, par­tic­u­lar­ly our chil­dren, are kept safe from preda­tors and un­want­ed harm. Mu­nic­i­pal Po­lice of­fi­cers play an in­te­gral role in the na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty frame­work at the com­mu­ni­ty lev­el and to­day’s events are a tes­ta­ment to that fact. In ex­e­cut­ing their du­ties, these of­fi­cers have once again high­light­ed the role that the Mu­nic­i­pal Po­lice Force plays in en­sur­ing greater safe­ty and se­cu­ri­ty through in­creased foot and ve­hic­u­lar pa­trols.”

The ex­er­cise was co­or­di­nat­ed by Se­nior Su­per­in­ten­dent San­tana and su­per­vised by WPC Su­per­in­ten­dent For­tune and In­spec­tor Carter. Al­so on the case were Sergeant Singh, Cor­po­ral Dalip, WPC Charles, PC Scott and oth­er of­fi­cers of the Point Fortin Mu­nic­i­pal Po­lice Sta­tion.