Chilling kidnapping

JENSEN LA VENDE

Se­nior Re­porter

[email protected]

The haunt­ing screams of kid­nap vic­tim Tara Po­li­ah not on­ly il­lus­trat­ed the fear she faced when four men bun­dled her in­to a car, but the fear which gripped the Don Miguel Road, San Juan com­mu­ni­ty when he neigh­bours re­alised she had been grabbed by crim­i­nals.

Around 7.12 pm on Wednes­day, Po­li­ah, 73, was grabbed at her home by four Venezue­lans, one a for­mer ten­ant for the past four months. One of the men placed a gun to her head and an­oth­er tried to block her mouth as she was dragged, kick­ing and scream­ing, in­to a Nis­san Y12 AD wag­on.

But in a mul­ti-agency re­sponse, which in­clud­ed the Coast Guard and po­lice ser­vice, Pol­ish was res­cued at sea hours lat­er and 11 peo­ple con­nect­ed to the ab­duc­tion were sub­se­quent­ly held. This in­clud­ed two men who jumped over­board as law en­force­ment was clos­ing in on the ves­sel they had Po­li­ah in. They were lat­er res­cued by a fish­er­man who hand­ed them over to the Coast Guard, be­fore be­ing turned over to the po­lice.

In a me­dia re­lease yes­ter­day, the TTPS said mem­bers of the De­fence Force in­ter­cept­ed a ves­sel ap­prox­i­mate­ly one nau­ti­cal mile north-north­west of Corozal. The ves­sel had six Venezue­lan men, two T&T men and Po­li­ah. The re­lease added that two men and a woman were al­so held at Tyri­co Bay one minute be­fore mid­night.

In a voice note to the me­dia, Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er Al­lis­ter Gue­var­ro praised the op­er­a­tion, say­ing, “This suc­cess­ful op­er­a­tion rep­re­sents a sig­nif­i­cant break­through in our on­go­ing ef­forts to dis­man­tle or­gan­ised crim­i­nal groups in­volved in cross-bor­der kid­nap­pings. The speed, pre­ci­sion and pro­fes­sion­al­ism dis­played in this res­cue demon­strates that Trinidad and To­ba­go’s law en­force­ment agen­cies are pre­pared, unit­ed and res­olute in pro­tect­ing our cit­i­zens.”

Gue­var­ro al­so thanked mem­bers of the pub­lic who shared in­for­ma­tion dur­ing the in­ves­ti­ga­tion, say­ing their co­op­er­a­tion con­tributed di­rect­ly to the out­come. He urged cit­i­zens to re­main vig­i­lant, warn­ing that crim­i­nals of­ten ex­ploit fa­mil­iar­i­ty and ac­cess to homes and busi­ness­es.

When Guardian Me­dia vis­it­ed the Don Miguel Road com­mu­ni­ty yes­ter­day, res­i­dents said they were fear­ful and chose not to speak on cam­era. One man who lived in the area for 49 years said this was the first time some­thing of this na­ture took place. While he praised the po­lice for their swift ac­tion, he chas­tised the Venezue­lans who con­tributed to the crime in the area.

“The prob­lem we have in the com­mu­ni­ty is the Span­ish and them, be­cause they get op­por­tu­ni­ty to come to live and like they get too ac­cus­tomed and they tell them­selves well they could do any­thing now. That is the prob­lem now we re­al­ly hav­ing with them, but oth­er­wise, you know, every­body’s like one in the com­mu­ni­ty, we don’t have no prob­lem.”

He fur­ther ad­vised land­lords to do a prop­er as­sess­ment of their for­eign ten­ants and called on Gov­ern­ment to give home-own­ers, through the grant­i­ng of firearm user li­cens­es, a means to pro­tect them­selves.

An­oth­er res­i­dent said be­cause the com­mu­ni­ty was so close-knit, he felt as though it was him who had been kid­napped.

A third res­i­dent called on Gov­ern­ment to weed out the crim­i­nal­ly-mind­ed Venezue­lans, adding that the kid­nap­ping trau­ma­tised the com­mu­ni­ty and it will take time for them to re­cov­er.

He said he was not feel­ing safe and the Gov­ern­ment must do bet­ter.

“Well, the Gov­ern­ment has to come stronger now, they have to come stronger and say what they have to say and get over with this thing. Ei­ther you send them (Venezue­lans) back or you change the back­ground. It have some good ones, it have some ones gen­uine, it has some work­ing gen­uine to make a dol­lar, then it have some do­ing the out­er tim­ing stuff.”

Echo­ing his sen­ti­ments was Home­land Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter Roger Alexan­der, who yes­ter­day warned that if the mi­grants can’t be­have, then they should go back.

“We will take every mea­sure nec­es­sary, pull out all the stops, to pro­tect our cit­i­zens. So, if you come here and you don’t want to en­joy what you have, what we have here, go home and don’t come back. Go home! And don’t come back!” Alexan­der said.

Mean­while, San Juan Busi­ness As­so­ci­a­tion pres­i­dent Abra­ham Ali said the Gov­ern­ment needs to send a clear mes­sage to crim­i­nals to en­sure such crimes will not go un­pun­ished.

“We are ask­ing and mak­ing a plea to the gov­ern­ment to seek the leg­isla­tive arm and get leg­is­la­tion that would be harsh on all these crimes that are against the gen­er­al pub­lic.”

Coun­cil­lor for El So­cor­ro/Aranguez North, Raquel Ghany, said the Zone of Spe­cial Op­er­a­tions (ZOSO) 2026 Bill , if it was passed, may have as­sist­ed in pre­vent­ing the kid­nap­ping. She as­sured her burgess­es that apart from the com­mu­ni­ty sup­port, the Barataria Po­lice Sta­tion is there to add to their safe­ty.

And while the com­mu­ni­ty and the min­is­ter say the Venezue­lans in­volved in crime should go back home, head of the La Ca­si­ta His­pan­ic Cul­tur­al Cen­tre, An­dreina Ven­tu­ra-Brown, is plead­ing with peo­ple not to paint all Venezue­lans with the same brush.

“It is not a na­tion­al or a mi­grant thing. That is stig­ma­ti­sa­tion. It is a cou­ple of peo­ple who don’t know bet­ter or who don’t pre­pare to face chal­lenges and then look for the easy way to find a liv­ing,” she said.

She al­so apol­o­gised to Po­li­ah and her rel­a­tives as well as the com­mu­ni­ty, say­ing: “We are very, very sor­ry you are go­ing through this. We re­al­ly hope the la­dy can get some kind of coun­selling to re­cov­er from what is hap­pen­ing. We don’t want them to think that it’s all Venezue­lans like that. We want to say crim­i­nal el­e­ments do this. I too was a vic­tim of crim­i­nal el­e­ments, and I don’t want to tar­get every­one the same way.”

Re­cent kid­nap­pings in­volv­ing Venezue­lan sus­pects

Po­li­ah’s ab­duc­tion is one of four in the past 12 months where Venezue­lans were sus­pect­ed to be in­volved:

Feb 3: Pe­nal busi­ness­man Michael Ale­jan­dro Es­pana Ram­nath was kid­napped while re­turn­ing home. Ram­nath, 34, who op­er­ates the Best Friends Burg­er Cart, was re­leased weeks af­ter he was grabbed. An undis­closed ran­som was re­port­ed­ly paid.

March 17: San Juan res­i­dent Cody Nar­ine was ab­duct­ed while at Tyri­co Bay and is be­lieved to be in Venezuela, af­ter “Span­ish-speak­ing men” de­mand­ed a ran­som of US$50,000 for his re­lease.

De­cem­ber 6, 2025: Der­rick and Clara­belle Tardieu were kid­napped from their Monos Is­land home is­land and a US$2.5 mil­lion ran­som ini­tial­ly de­mand­ed. Ten days lat­er, Der­rick was re­leased af­ter less than $200,000 was re­port­ed­ly paid. Ap­prox­i­mate­ly three weeks lat­er, his wife was re­leased. The ran­som pay­ment for her was not dis­closed.

The TTPS yes­ter­day sent out an ad­vi­so­ry to land­lords on how to deal with for­eign and mi­grant ten­ants.

•Con­duct back­ground checks on po­ten­tial ten­ants. Re­quire every adult ten­ant to pro­vide a re­cent Cer­tifi­cate of Char­ac­ter and 2 valid forms of ID

Use a prop­er­ly draft­ed writ­ten lease agree­ment. Have a lo­cal at­tor­ney re­view or draft it to match Trinidad and To­ba­go’s laws

•Screen for fi­nan­cial sta­bil­i­ty and re­li­a­bil­i­ty. Ask for:

Job let­ter or proof of in­come

Re­cent payslips or bank state­ments

Ref­er­ences from pre­vi­ous land­lords

•In­spect and doc­u­ment every­thing be­fore ten­ants move in.

•Ver­i­fy im­mi­gra­tion sta­tus for non-na­tion­als. If rent­ing to for­eign­ers, en­sure they are legal­ly per­mit­ted to re­side in Trinidad and To­ba­go and ad­here to all im­mi­gra­tion laws and re­quire­ments