Sascha Wil­son

Se­nior Re­porter

sascha.wilon@guardian.co.tt

Pe­nal busi­ness­man Michael Ale­jan­dro Es­pana Ram­nath has been re­leased by his cap­tors af­ter a ran­som was paid, po­lice have con­firmed.

The amount paid and the cir­cum­stances sur­round­ing his re­lease have not been dis­closed, but in­ves­ti­ga­tors said he was freed more than a week ago. Ram­nath, 34, who op­er­ates the Best Friends Burg­er Cart with his fa­ther along the SS Erin Road in Pe­nal, was ab­duct­ed around 11 pm on Feb­ru­ary 3 while re­turn­ing home. He and his 65-year-old fa­ther had closed their busi­ness around 10.45 pm and left sep­a­rate­ly in their ve­hi­cles.

Ram­nath was dri­ving a grey Toy­ota Hilux, while his fa­ther fol­lowed in a white Nis­san Almera. As they reached the Agri­cul­tur­al Cen­tre along Ram­jat­tan Trace at about 11 pm, a white ve­hi­cle—its make, mod­el and reg­is­tra­tion num­ber un­known—pulled in front of Ram­nath, block­ing his path.

Two masked men dressed in black ex­it­ed the ve­hi­cle, one armed with a firearm. They opened Ram­nath’s dri­ver’s door and forced him in­to their ve­hi­cle. The gun­man then con­front­ed his fa­ther, re­port­ed­ly speak­ing in Span­ish, and de­mand­ed mon­ey. Fear­ing for his life, the el­der Ram­nath hand­ed over his wal­let con­tain­ing $4,000, rep­re­sent­ing the day’s sales. The sus­pects then sped off with the younger Ram­nath.

The fa­ther lat­er went to the Pe­nal Po­lice Sta­tion at about 11.55 pm. Of­fi­cers sub­se­quent­ly con­veyed both ve­hi­cles to the sta­tion as part of on­go­ing in­ves­ti­ga­tions. Fol­low­ing the ab­duc­tion, neigh­bours were re­luc­tant to speak pub­licly about the in­ci­dent, though one res­i­dent de­scribed it as a wake-up call for the com­mu­ni­ty. The res­i­dent said the neigh­bour­hood is usu­al­ly peace­ful and ini­tial­ly be­lieved the re­port was a hoax, but re­alised its se­ri­ous­ness af­ter a heavy po­lice pres­ence in the area.

“It was shock­ing and a bit fright­en­ing,” the neigh­bour said, adding that the in­ci­dent has left res­i­dents more vig­i­lant and aware of their sur­round­ings.

Of­fi­cers at­tached to the An­ti-Kid­nap­ping Unit, the South West­ern Di­vi­sion and the South­ern Di­vi­sion are con­tin­u­ing in­ves­ti­ga­tions.