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Saturday, July 12, 2025

Abductors unnoticed before striking at UWI

Students, guard shot at during escape

by

Rhondor Dowlat
2417 days ago
20181128

The kid­nap­ping of Maria Dass-Su­per­sad, while she was on The Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies’ St Au­gus­tine cam­pus com­pound, has been de­scribed as bold­face and dar­ing.

In fact, the act, in which three men snatched the 26-year-old moth­er of one from her car, was de­scribed by eye­wit­ness­es as like a scene from the movie Tak­en.

One eye­wit­ness told the T&T Guardian that the men were seen lin­ger­ing in and around the com­pound near the uni­ver­si­ty’s book­store, which is on the north­ern side of the cam­pus, mo­ments be­fore the in­ci­dent.

“I guess no one no­ticed any un­usu­al move­ment but it went down very pro­fes­sion­al­ly. I was not too far off when I no­ticed Maria walk­ing to­wards her parked car…as she got in and pulled off, the men—one dressed in a po­lice uni­form and the oth­er in a sol­dier’s uni­form—got in the sil­ver Ti­i­da and the dri­ver, who had on black, drove up to her ve­hi­cle and forced her to stop.

“In a flash, the men just grabbed her from her ve­hi­cle and bod­i­ly throw her in their ve­hi­cle. As the dri­ver was speed­ing off one of the men put a gun through the win­dow and opened shots on sev­er­al stu­dents and se­cu­ri­ty guard. Lucky thing no one was hurt but every­body very shak­en up.”

The eye­wit­ness added, “There was plen­ty peo­ple around. Peo­ple scam­per­ing, scream­ing, shout­ing but it was all too fast…like a blink of an eye…some­body told me that they saw the Ti­i­da there for a while, first in a park and then in the dri­ve­way of the car park, some­times dri­ving around slow­ly, but, I didn’t no­tice that.”

Dass-Su­per­sad was as­signed to the uni­ver­si­ty’s In­sti­tute of In­ter­na­tion­al Ad­vance­ment and was said to be on her way to pick up her six-year-old daugh­ter.

A po­lice re­lease is­sued short­ly af­ter the in­ci­dent con­firmed that the po­lice, up to press time, were search­ing for Dass-Su­per­sad, of Lange Park, Ch­agua­nas.

The in­ci­dent oc­curred at about 3.38 pm. The li­cense plates of the get­away car, PDK 9561, were lat­er dis­cov­ered to be false, the po­lice con­firmed.

An­oth­er eye­wit­ness, who was ap­par­ent­ly one car be­hind Dass-Su­per­sad when the kid­nap­pers struck, post­ed on Face­book in­stant­ly, “Omg y’all! I just wit­nessed a kid­nap­ping in Uwi one car in front of me and bul­lets fly­ing…I’m so ef­fin shak­en up! Y’all be care­ful out there! The la­dy’s car just parked there emp­ty now wdf sad #trinidadis­no­tare­alplace y’all.”

A traf­fic and se­cu­ri­ty ad­vi­so­ry was sub­se­quent­ly sent out by the uni­ver­si­ty’s Mar­ket­ing and Com­mu­ni­ca­tions de­part­ment at 3.45 pm ad­vis­ing stu­dents that the North Gate was closed. It gave no rea­son for the clo­sure but added that stu­dents could gain ac­cess to the uni­ver­si­ty via the Free­dom Hall Gate, Heart­ease Gate and the South Gate.

In­ves­ti­gat­ing of­fi­cers con­firmed they re­trieved footage caught on sur­veil­lance cam­eras from in and around the uni­ver­si­ty cam­pus, as well as from near­by busi­ness­es (north, west, east and south of the perime­ter of the cam­pus).

Up to press time no ran­som call had been made.

In­ves­ti­ga­tions are con­tin­u­ing.


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