Pirate attack in Gulf of Paria: Seven Trinidad fishermen robbed, forced overboard

(Trinidad Guardian) The search con­tin­ues for sev­en fish­er­men who were forced over­board af­ter they were at­tacked by ban­dits in the Gulf of Paria on Mon­day night.

By 10 am on Tues­day po­lice tracked down and re­cov­ered the six stolen boat en­gines in a pirogue an­chored off Sea Lots, Port-of-Spain.

 
Four peo­ple — two men and two women — had been de­tained in con­nec­tion with the find.

The Coast Guard and oth­er fish­er­men have been search­ing for the miss­ing men iden­ti­fied as — Leslie De­boula, Anand Ram­per­sad, Shi­va Ramdeo, cousins Bran­don Kissoon and Justin Kissoon, Trevor Bap­tiste and a man known on­ly as Alex.

Five oth­er men made it back to shore. Three of them were on a ves­sel with­out an en­gine and two oth­ers res­cued from the wa­ter by oth­er fish­er­men.

Rel­a­tives gath­ered at the Or­ange Val­ley Fish­ing Port yes­ter­day pray­ing for the men’s safe re­turn as boat­loads of oth­er fish­er­men joined the search.

One of those sur­vivors, Bri­an Seemu­n­gal re­called he was on board a pirogue with two oth­ers — the cap­tain Bap­tiste and Alex — kilo­me­tres out at sea when an­oth­er ves­sel came up along­side them.

Seemu­n­gal said he was drift­ing the wa­ter for hours be­fore he was res­cued and lat­er learned that .

“Three of them come and talk to we like nor­mal and then one of the fel­las pull a gun and say he wants the en­gine and if he can’t get the en­gine he will take the boat,” Seemu­n­gal said.

“It couldn’t bolt out so they hit the cap­tain two “planass” and they hit Alex, the next sailor, two slap with that they send me by the bow. When they get in the boat and they re­alise the en­gine re­al­ly can’t come out, they say they tak­ing the whole boat so we have to dive out.”

He said the at­tack­ers ap­peared to be lo­cals and one man had a Guyanese ac­cent.

One of them was armed with a long gun.

“I nev­er see a gun like this, it chrome, this is gun­men buy­ing to go and rob peo­ple,” a shak­en Seemu­ngul said.

Seemu­n­gal said he lat­er learned that oth­er boats had been at­tacked in the same area.

Sahi­dan Khan, the wife of an­oth­er miss­ing fish­er­man who was re­port­ed­ly stabbed and beat­en with a cut­lass, could not con­tain her tears yes­ter­day as spoke about Ram­per­sad.

“I got a phone call this morn­ing, I hear peo­ple say­ing he has been stabbed, some say­ing he was beat­en and thrown over­board, the oth­er guy said he was beat­en very bad­ly and when they were thrown over­board, he was com­plain­ing about pains,” she said.

“I just want him to come home, we have three lit­tle chil­dren and I need him in my life right now.”

Runa Ali, the moth­er Bran­don Kissoon, stood look­ing out to sea pray­ing for her son’s safe re­turn.

“I just want my son to come home. He and my nephew, both of them are so young,” she said.

Pres­i­dent of the Car­li Bay Fish­ing As­so­ci­a­tion Im­ti­az Khan said this was one of the worst in­ci­dents in­volv­ing fish­er­men robbed at sea he has ever seen. He said for years fish­er­men not on­ly had to deal with ban­dits at sea but oil spills.

He crit­i­cised the Coast Guard for their in­ef­fi­cien­cy, say­ing 11 hours af­ter the at­tacks a pa­trol ves­sel was sent out to join the search.

He called for more pa­trols by the Coast Guard to pro­tect fish­er­men.

“We have very lit­tle help from the Coast Guard, we have he­li­copters parked up, ves­sels parked up and fish­er­men in need…this is what is go­ing on here, we have big, big bud­gets for every­thing but noth­ing to help fish­er­men,” he said.

“We can’t be sit­ting ducks, I tired of hear­ing fish­er­men are sit­ting ducks, we need to get fish­er­men these lit­tle ra­dios so from the time one strike, they could alert the rest.”

Guardian Me­dia reached out to the Coast Guard for a com­ment on Tues­day but up un­til press time, none was re­ceived.