Jensen La Vende

Se­nior Re­porter

jensen.lavende@guardian.co.tt

Prayers worked for rideshare dri­ver Ke­ston Ram­sey. Af­ter he prayed for the men who ab­duct­ed and beat him, they set him free.

Around 3.15 pm on Tues­day, Ram­sey, 35, ac­cept­ed a job on the De­liv­erMe TT rideshare app and picked up two men who asked to be tak­en to Pi­ar­co In­ter­na­tion­al Air­port.

Along the way, at the cor­ner of Bourg Mala­tresse and Sad­dle Road in San Juan, one of the men pulled out a firearm, an­nounced a rob­bery and or­dered Ram­sey to dri­ve to El Peri­co Road, San­ta Cruz, where two more sus­pects joined them.

He was bound around his hands, legs, chest, and head with duct tape and tak­en to a se­clud­ed forest­ed area where he was tied to a tree and beat­en.

Ram­sey, who spent sev­er­al hours at the San Juan Po­lice Sta­tion re­liv­ing the or­deal yes­ter­day, said when the men en­tered his ve­hi­cle, they no­ticed a Bible and told him it would not save him.

Some­time dur­ing the or­deal, he asked the men if he could pray for them and they agreed. Dur­ing the prayers, the men con­fid­ed in him and told him of their trou­bles.

Around 10 pm, af­ter he was beat­en and his bank ac­count was emp­tied by the men, Ram­sey was un­tied and re­leased. His ab­duc­tors kept his ve­hi­cle and valu­ables.

It was first re­port­ed that Ram­sey was on the Travee Tech­nolo­gies rideshare app. How­ev­er, chief op­er­at­ing of­fi­cer Mar­lon Jef­fers said that was not so. He ex­plained that just be­fore he was ab­duct­ed. Ram­sey told rel­a­tives he had ac­cept­ed a ride on the app that was lat­er can­celled.

He switched to De­liv­erMe TT, an­oth­er rideshare app, and it was there that he ac­cept­ed the ride with the men who ab­duct­ed him.

De­liv­erMe TT is a fe­male-led com­pa­ny found­ed in 2019 to ad­dress the dan­gers of pub­lic trans­port and low­er-qual­i­ty pri­vate dri­vers.

Jef­fers high­light­ed the safe­ty mea­sures in place for dri­vers on the app.

“As a com­pa­ny root­ed in com­mu­ni­ty trust and user safe­ty, Travee con­tin­ues to strength­en its se­cu­ri­ty mea­sures,” he said.

“Our plat­form cur­rent­ly of­fers: dri­ver and rid­er iden­ti­ty ver­i­fi­ca­tion, trip log­ging and ac­count ac­tiv­i­ty track­ing, vis­i­bil­i­ty of rid­er ver­i­fi­ca­tion sta­tus to dri­vers, SOS but­ton for emer­gency con­tacts and live trip track­ing that can be shared via What­sApp.

“In re­sponse to this in­ci­dent, we are ex­pe­dit­ing a new safe­ty fea­ture roll­out on May 30, to fur­ther en­hance rid­er and dri­ver pro­tec­tion.”