Jensen La Vende

A dash for free­dom by a sus­pect­ed child kid­nap­per last­ed all of ten min­utes yes­ter­day af­ter he was re-ar­rest­ed a few me­tres from the Port-of-Spain Gen­er­al Hos­pi­tal, where he had been un­der po­lice guard for the past two weeks.Around 7 am, the 33-year-old sus­pect in the kid­nap­ping of Keyian­na Noel asked to be tak­en to the bath­room on Ward 21. On near­ing the bath­room, how­ev­er, he punched PC Mc In­tosh in the face, throw­ing him to the floor.The sus­pect then ran out of the hos­pi­tal, steal­ing an undis­closed amount of cash from a taxi dri­ver who had his win­dows down.He ran in­to the grounds of the Holy Name Con­vent and Holy Name Prepara­to­ry School, which are on the same com­pound but are sep­a­rat­ed by a wall. The schools are next to the hos­pi­tal. The man's fran­tic bid to es­cape caused pan­ic in the schools af­ter he was cor­nered there by of­fi­cers, in­clud­ing Mc In­tosh, and re-ar­rest­ed be­fore be­ing tak­en back to hos­pi­tal.

The T&T Guardian was told that af­ter po­lice fired a sin­gle warn­ing shot at the sus­pect, an alarm bell was set off which alert­ed all the girls of the Holy Name Con­vent to as­sem­ble in the hall.

Af­ter the warn­ing shot, more po­lice of­fi­cers ar­rived and cor­doned off the school grounds and the sus­pect was held as he tried to scale the school wall.How­ev­er, the shot had many of the girls scream­ing and run­ning but no one was in­jured. Some fran­tic pupils tele­phoned their par­ents, who raced to the school to se­cure their chil­dren.The school prin­ci­pal sub­se­quent­ly told the chil­dren what had hap­pened and they were giv­en the op­tion to leave school ear­ly or re­main. The prin­ci­pal al­so as­sured that coun­selling would be pro­vid­ed for those who were in need.Staff from the Min­istry of Ed­u­ca­tion lat­er vis­it­ed the school and spoke with both teach­ers and pupils.Po­lice from the Port-of-Spain Crim­i­nal In­tel­li­gence De­part­ment and Bel­mont Po­lice Sta­tion, in­clud­ing In­sp Har­vey Jawadir and Sgt Alexan­der, al­so ar­rived at the school. ASP Ajith Per­sad or­dered that the man should be kept hand­cuffed at all times to pre­vent any pos­si­ble re­cur­rence. He al­so or­dered a thor­ough in­ves­ti­ga­tion of the es­cape bid.

The kid­nap

The sus­pect had been at the hos­pi­tal since his ar­rest on Jan­u­ary 2 af­ter com­plain­ing of pains in the chest and ab­domen. He was sched­uled to un­der­go a CT scan but was un­able to due to a lack of equip­ment.An ul­tra­sound showed the sus­pect, who was vom­it­ing and spit­ting blood, had sev­er­al bro­ken ribs which the CT scan was to con­firm. He was due to re­ceive the scan over the week­end but an al­ler­gic re­ac­tion to fish stopped it.The sus­pect was held by mem­bers of the North East­ern Di­vi­sion Task Force head­ed by In­sp Roger Alexan­der af­ter he twice failed to sur­ren­der to po­lice.On De­cem­ber 17 last year Keyian­na was tak­en from her fam­i­ly's Dun­can Street, Port-of-Spain, apart­ment. A re­port was made to the Besson Street Po­lice and the next day po­lice picked her up along the Pri­or­i­ty Bus Route (PBR), Aranguez.The sus­pect is to be charged with es­cap­ing law­ful cus­tody, as­sault­ing a po­lice of­fi­cer and lar­ce­ny in ad­di­tion to the kid­nap­ping charge.

Mes­sage from the school

Dear par­ents,

We wish to as­sure you that the school is set­tled and back to nor­mal fol­low­ing the en­trance of an in­trud­er on the com­pound and the in­ter­ven­tion of the po­lice in his pur­suit.You may have re­ceived vary­ing ac­counts of the event, pos­si­bly from your daugh­ter, and we are aware that re­ports have al­ready sur­faced on so­cial me­dia. How­ev­er, we wish to clar­i­fy that no one was in­jured on the com­pound and the in­trud­er who used the com­pound as his es­cape route was ap­pre­hend­ed by the po­lice off the com­pound.

We tried as far as pos­si­ble to put the school in lock­down mode while the of­fi­cers were on the com­pound and fol­low­ing their ex­it have been able to set­tle the girls, get them in­to as­sem­bly and re­view our safe­ty pro­ce­dures.We do hope that the school day will pro­ceed with as great a de­gree of nor­mal­cy as pos­si­ble and we will be at­ten­tive to any signs of trau­ma in the stu­dent pop­u­la­tion as a re­sult of this.We are at present in­un­dat­ed by calls from con­cerned par­ents and thus wish to guar­an­tee you that your daugh­ters are safe, the school is set­tled and that there is no rea­son to pan­ic.We thank you for your un­der­stand­ing.