Trinidad: Relatives pray for kidnapped cousins, unable to pay US$40k ransom

By Staff Editor On In Trinidad & Tobago News |
Ashley Boodoo speaks to the media about her brother Kenrick Joseph, 17, who was kidnapped with his cousin Kendell Singh at sea in Moruga.
Ashley Boodoo speaks to the media about her brother Kenrick Joseph, 17, who was kidnapped with his cousin Kendell Singh at sea in Moruga.

(Trinidad Guardian) Rel­a­tives of cousins Ken­rick Mor­gan and Kendall Singh are pray­ing that their kid­nap­pers have a change of heart and not kill them by this week­end’s dead­line. A US$40,000 ran­som has been de­mand­ed for their re­turn.

Sources said that both men were from av­er­age fam­i­lies who could not af­ford to pay the US$40,000 ran­som. One source said that mon­ey was owed to a Venezue­lan jefe by one of Singh’s col­leagues.

Mor­gan, 17, a Form Five stu­dent of the Moru­ga Sec­ondary School, lives in a hum­ble home with his fam­i­ly in Grand Chemin, Moru­ga. Singh, 23, a fish­er­man, lives with his fam­i­ly a few kilo­me­tres away in Basse Terre.

Kenrick Morgan

Mor­gan’s sis­ter, Ash­ley Boodoo said that there was no way her fam­i­ly could come up with that mon­ey. Boodoo said that her broth­er left home around 2.30 pm on Sat­ur­day. He told her moth­er that he was go­ing to Singh’s house and from there they would go fish­ing. It was the last time his moth­er, Lin­da Boodoo, saw him. She said Mor­gan has no phone so they were un­able to con­tact him

On Sun­day, Singh’s moth­er, Joy, con­tact­ed Lin­da, in­form­ing her that their sons had gone miss­ing.

“Ap­par­ent­ly like the Span­ish, where they are now, con­tact­ed one of Singh’s broth­er, say­ing that they need US$40,000 to re­turn them home safe­ly. We don’t know where they are, all we know is that they said they are in Venezuela,” Boodoo said. The

Boodoos re­port­ed the dis­ap­pear­ance to Moru­ga po­lice on Mon­day.

A po­lice re­port stat­ed that the cousins were fish­ing off the Moru­ga wa­ters when they were kid­napped and pos­si­bly tak­en to Venezuela. How­ev­er, Boodoo said that a Venezue­lan na­tion­al al­so left on the fish­ing trip.

The kid­nap­ping came just af­ter the Unit­ed Arab Emi­rates news site, the Na­tion­al, pub­lished a re­port that Trinidad was suf­fer­ing from the col­lapse of Venezuela’s econ­o­my as pi­rates were tar­get­ing lo­cal fish­er­men. Boodoo said fish­er­men be­ing tar­get­ed at sea was noth­ing new in Moru­ga.

Linda Boodoo looks at the identification photo of her son Kenrick Joseph Morgan 17, a form five student of Grand Chemin Moruga , who went missing at sea and is feared kidnapped along with his cousin Kendell Singh.
Photo by Vashti Singh

“The lat­est is that my broth­er is there and they (kid­nap­pers) want the mon­ey in a week’s time or else they (vic­tims) will be killed. Right now my moth­er is in a con­di­tion and I don’t know what is go­ing on. Right now we are just sit­ting down and pray­ing to God that some­thing will work out and my broth­er will come home safe­ly…They said that in a week’s time if they don’t get their mon­ey, they are start­ing to kill,” Boodoo said.

Joy, who spoke by phone yes­ter­day, de­clined to say much about the in­ci­dent. She said that peo­ple were spread­ing ru­mours about what had re­al­ly hap­pened. She said lo­cal rep­re­sen­ta­tives in Venezuela are as­sist­ing her fam­i­ly and al­though she was not able to speak to Singh, she was con­fi­dent that he was alive.

“All that peo­ple talk­ing, don’t study no­body. It is just ru­moured they are spread­ing, say­ing that they (kid­nap­pers) throw him here and there. Peo­ple just like to talk and that is why I don’t want to say any­thing as yet,” Joy said.