The 62-year-old gardener who was kidnapped last Tuesday and was found dead in a forested area in Manzanilla on Friday died of a broken neck.In a telephone interview with the T&T Guardian yesterday, pathologist Dr Valery Alexandrov said John Ramoutar was blindfolded and his hands tied behind his back.Ramoutar died, he said, because his spinal cord was severed between the fifth and sixth vertebra, which is usually seen in a car accident when the victim is rear-ended.
Alexandrov said he found haemorrhaging in the right side of the face and believed Ramoutar might have been punched so hard his head was flung backwards and his neck over-extended, causing the fatal injury.Two men led police to Ramoutar's decomposing body in the Manzanilla forest on Friday after confessing they had kidnapped him and killed him for money he owed them after his animals ate their crops.
The men, both in their early 20s, are former students of Ramoutar, who was a former teacher.He was last seen alive on Tuesday after he told relatives he was going to tend to his crops about 100 metres from his home at Eastern Main Road, Manzanilla.