Jensen La Vende

Thank God!These were the words of re­lieved fa­ther Jas­son Noel yes­ter­day, af­ter his six-year-old daugh­ter Keyana Noel, who was ab­duct­ed by a male rel­a­tive on Tues­day from her Dun­can Street, Port-of-Spain home, was re­turned to him safe and sound.Noel had gone in­to pan­ic mode on Tues­day af­ter his daugh­ter went miss­ing, es­pe­cial­ly in light of the re­cent spate of vi­o­lent crimes which had been com­mit­ted against chil­dren.

But thanks to the work of the An­ti-Kid­nap­ping Squad, Noel can now spend the Christ­mas sea­son with his daugh­ter in his arms.In an in­ter­view with mem­bers of the me­dia at his home yes­ter­day, a re­lieved Noel, 32, said: "I have no words oth­er than thank God, thank God, thank God!

"You see me here, I haven't slept since Mon­day night. I was just a wreck as soon as I found out what hap­pened. I couldn't un­der­stand why this man would come in­to my house and take my child. She didn't do him any­thing. I didn't do him any­thing. So why re­sort to tak­ing Keyana?"Ac­cord­ing to po­lice re­ports, a man who had a re­la­tion­ship with the child's moth­er that turned sour ab­duct­ed Keyana be­cause he was not be­ing al­lowed to see his own child.

Af­ter she was ab­duct­ed, how­ev­er, mem­bers of the AKS re­port­ed­ly fol­lowed leads, en­tered in­to a pe­ri­od of ne­go­ti­a­tion with the 36-year-old sus­pect and even­tu­al­ly got him to agree to re­lease Keyana.The child was picked up by mem­bers of the AKS from the sus­pect's sis­ter at the Aranguez Sa­van­nah, San Juan, around 9.30 am yes­ter­day.

Cops get ku­dos

Yes­ter­day, Noel pro­fuse­ly thanked the po­lice for their swift ac­tion, adding they worked tire­less­ly un­til his daugh­ter was re­turned."As much as peo­ple would want to say neg­a­tive things about the po­lice – there are the one or two who does re­al­ly act up and try to keep peo­ple down–but you see yes­ter­day (Tues­day), them po­lice work hard," Noel said.

"They were up all night with us. At all 3 am they out on the road, go­ing Aranguez, En­ter­prise, Cara­pichaima. They worked hard. They didn't stop un­til she was re­cov­ered. And for that I am eter­nal­ly grate­ful to them."Noel said the sus­pect want­ed to use Keyana as a bar­gain­ing tool to gain ac­cess to his own daugh­ter, Keyana's sis­ter.The child was snatched by the sus­pect, af­ter he asked her if she want­ed any snacks.

At the time, Noel said he was across the road. He said, how­ev­er, that every­one in the area knew his fam­i­ly so he was con­fi­dent his daugh­ter was safe.Noel said he was told that the sus­pect threat­ened peo­ple when asked what he was do­ing at the apart­ment.Po­lice were still search­ing for the sus­pect up to late yes­ter­day.This in­ci­dent came weeks af­ter the mur­der of an­oth­er six-year-old girl named Keyana.

That child, Keyana Cum­berb­tach, went miss­ing from her Mal­oney home on No­vem­ber 25 and her bad­ly de­com­pos­ing body was found in a ship­ping bar­rel in her apart­ment three days lat­er.The child, an au­top­sy re­port re­vealed, was bashed in the head so se­vere­ly that her skull was cracked and while she was un­con­scious she was sex­u­al­ly as­sault­ed.Dwayne Lewis, 28, ap­peared in court on Mon­day charged with Cum­ber­batch's mur­der.