Kali­fa Clyne

For­mer Hous­ing De­vel­op­ment Cor­po­ra­tion (HDC) chair­man Jear­lean John found her­self sprint­ing across the Queen's Park Sa­van­nah, scal­ing barbed wire walls and hid­ing be­hind trees and bush­es yes­ter­day as she scam­pered for safe­ty on hear­ing loud ex­plo­sions while jog­ging.

Po­lice lat­er said they be­lieved the loud ex­plo­sions were scratch bombs be­ing thrown by some­one or sev­er­al peo­ple in a ve­hi­cle.

In a tele­phone in­ter­view, John, who was in good spir­its, said she was run­ning yes­ter­day morn­ing along with her sis­ter, who is vis­it­ing for Christ­mas, when they both heard the ex­plo­sions.

"When we got to near where the US em­bassy is lo­cat­ed (Mar­li Street) I heard the ex­plo­sions. They were rapid and loud," she said.

She said at this point she en­cour­aged her sis­ter, a Unit­ed States cit­i­zen, to run to­ward the em­bassy.

She said the sound start­ed get­ting loud­er and in­stead, she and her sis­ter opt­ed to hide be­hind a tree.

It was then that the two saw a black SUV, with the win­dows down and heard some­one shout­ing.

"They were shout­ing, 'look them over there,'" John said.

She said they ran fur­ther in­to the sa­van­nah as the SUV con­tin­ued dri­ving and turned in­to a street be­fore re­turn­ing to the sa­van­nah.

"We ran across the road to where there was an emp­ty lot of land. Then we con­tin­ued run­ning. We lay down in peo­ple yards and when we heard the ex­plo­sion again we jumped over peo­ple's walls and start­ed knock­ing on doors but no one would an­swer."

John said some­one even­tu­al­ly opened their door but did not speak Eng­lish.

She said at this point, she di­alled 999 and wait­ed for the po­lice.

"The po­lice came in about six min­utes and they were very pro­fes­sion­al. The se­nior su­per­in­ten­dent was very help­ful."

"I am al­low­ing the po­lice to in­ves­ti­gate and they will say what it was and why it was hap­pen­ing. I know they were rapid and loud ex­plo­sions and we ran away from it."

She said she in­tend­ed to en­joy her Christ­mas and did not want to fo­cus on the in­ci­dent as she did not want to feel afraid. Yes­ter­day, man­ag­er of Cor­po­rate Com­mu­ni­ca­tions for the T&T Po­lice Ser­vice Ellen Lewis said in­quiries sug­gest that uniden­ti­fied peo­ple, trav­el­ling in a black ve­hi­cle around the sa­van­nah at 5.30 am en­gaged in the reck­less act of throw­ing scratch bombs from their ve­hi­cles at two ear­ly morn­ing jog­gers.

She said in­ves­ti­ga­tions were con­tin­u­ing in­to the in­ci­dent.