Jensen La Vende

Ren­nie Cool­man, the wid­ow­er of mur­der vic­tim Vin­dra Naipaul-Cool­man, yes­ter­day ad­mit­ted un­der cross-ex­am­i­na­tion that he did noth­ing to as­sist his wife dur­ing the har­row­ing five-minute pe­ri­od when her kid­nap­pers snatched her from her car out­side their Lange Park, Ch­agua­nas, home and took her away.Cool­man, the cam­pus man­ag­er at the Uni­ver­si­ty of T&T, was the sole state wit­ness called yes­ter­day in the tri­al, in which 12 men are ac­cused of mur­der­ing the Xtra Foods CEO af­ter she was kid­napped on De­cem­ber 19, 2006.Cool­man told spe­cial state pros­e­cu­tor Dana See­ta­hal, SC, that he was scared when he saw a masked gun­man out­side their home af­ter he heard his wife's car pull in­to the dri­ve­way.

He said he was at the cou­ple's Radix Road home when his wife of just over a year ar­rived around 8.30 pm. At the time he was hav­ing din­ner and the house­keep­er, Rasheedan Ya­coob, went to the door.He said he heard Ya­coob scream and he rushed to the locked bur­glarproof­ing gate and saw a masked gun­man, who turned in his di­rec­tion, so he ran back to the liv­ing room. There he heard his wife's screams and six gun­shots be­fore the car sped off."I felt very, very scared," he said.Af­ter the men took his wife, Cool­man re­called, he asked his step­daugh­ter, Risha Ali, for a tele­phone call and called one of Ali's friends, who was a po­lice of­fi­cer, then his broth­er-in-law Ryan Naipaul, be­fore ven­tur­ing out­side.Out­side the house he no­ticed blood on the dri­ve­way and a set of den­tures that Naipaul-Cool­man had put in months ear­li­er. He al­so saw three bul­let holes in the left rear side of her car.

Cool­man said po­lice came to the house about ten to 15 min­utes af­ter his wife was snatched, did pre­lim­i­nary in­ves­ti­ga­tions and in­stalled a voice recorder.On De­cem­ber 24 the first ran­som call was made around 9 pm, he said. This was fol­lowed by four oth­er calls, two of which oc­curred sev­er­al weeks af­ter the ini­tial con­tact.Dur­ing all the tele­phone con­ver­sa­tions with the kid­nap­per on the oth­er end, Cool­man's broth­er-in-law pre­tend­ed to be him and ne­go­ti­at­ed with the kid­nap­pers.A to­tal of $120,000 in ran­som was paid and Naipaul of­fered to sell his (Cool­man's) car and give them an ad­di­tion­al $70,000, which the kid­nap­pers re­fused, as they "knew my sit­u­a­tion," he said.In the last con­ver­sa­tion with the kid­nap­pers, Cool­man re­called hear­ing on the oth­er end a fe­male voice say­ing: "I am Vin­dra Naipaul-Cool­man and I am in­jured."He added that when Naipaul tried to have a con­ver­sa­tion with the woman on the oth­er end, the phone was dis­con­nect­ed, prompt­ing his broth­er-in-law to be­lieve that the voice was pre-record­ed.

Un­fa­mil­iar sur­round­ings

Un­der cross-ex­am­i­na­tion by de­fence at­tor­ney Kwe­si Bekoe, Cool­man agreed he had failed to as­sist his wife."I did not run and hide, I moved away from the front door from the view of the gun," Cool­man an­swered when asked if he hid while a masked gun­man was tak­ing off with his wife.Asked if he thought his wife need­ed any as­sis­tance, Cool­man replied: "You could say that."Asked if he had any good rea­son why he did not at­tempt to ren­der any as­sis­tance to his wife, Cool­man said he had a rea­son but was not sure it was a good one.Cool­man said there was a switch which con­trolled the front gate but he failed to use it. He added that he was not too fa­mil­iar with his neigh­bours or the neigh­bour­hood se­cu­ri­ty, which he did not con­tact dur­ing or af­ter the or­deal.Asked why he did not con­tact the po­lice at 999 at any time, Cool­man said his first re­ac­tion was to get in con­tact with the An­ti-Kid­nap­ping Squad (AKS).

The wid­ow­er said he was not in­volved in his wife's busi­ness and re­called ben­e­fit­ing once in the form of a va­ca­tion from it, when they went to a food sym­po­sium in Colom­bia.He added that al­though they had no se­crets be­tween them, he was not privy to the fi­nan­cial stand­ing of the busi­ness and dis­agreed that his wife did a good thing by keep­ing him out of the fam­i­ly-run busi­ness.

Cool­man al­so told Bekoe at no time was he afraid of be­ing pros­e­cut­ed in re­la­tion to the kid­nap­ping and sub­se­quent mur­der of his wife.Bekoe, who had told Jus­tice Mal­com Holdip he would take an­oth­er 30 min­utes with Cool­man, had his time cut short af­ter the State ob­ject­ed to his ask­ing Cool­man if he had ever paid mon­ey to any­one pre­tend­ing to be a state at­tor­ney.