The T&T Coast Guard is as­sist­ing po­lice in the search for 28-year-old Ju­dah Ram­nar­ine who was kid­napped by Venezue­lan pi­rates over a week ago.

Guardian Me­dia un­der­stands that the Coast Guard is con­duct­ing fre­quent pa­trols of the na­tion’s wa­ters in search of the pi­rates or the ves­sel “Maria” which was al­leged­ly tak­en by the pi­rates.

Guardian Me­dia al­so un­der­stands that the Min­istry of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty was con­tact­ed to en­gage In­ter­pol in Venezuela and make them aware of the sit­u­a­tion.

Lead­ing the in­ves­ti­ga­tion and search is Sgt Vikash Putkoo of the Ce­dros dis­trict. On Jan­u­ary 13, con­struc­tion work­er and fish­er­man, Ju­dah “Flats” Ram­nar­ine, of Mafek­ing Vil­lage, Ma­yaro, along with cap­tain Dionne Mur­ray and Ke­ston Marc­hand from the Oropouche area, went on a fish­ing trip aboard the boat “Maria”.

Around 9 pm, how­ev­er, four armed men, who were speak­ing Span­ish, pulled along­side their ves­sel.

One of the armed men board­ed the fish­er­men’s ves­sel and sig­nalled to his ac­com­plices to join him.

Ac­cord­ing to re­ports, Marc­hand and Mur­ray jumped off and were res­cued by a pass­ing ves­sel around 7 am the next day.

They were tak­en to the Oropouche fish­ing bay and lat­er made a re­port to the po­lice.