Trinidad – Female taxi-driver saved from a would-be rapist

(THE GUARDIAN) Keen ob­ser­va­tion and quick re­sponse saved a woman from be­ing raped and may have saved her life from a man who board­ed her taxi at D’Abadie and an­nounced a hold-up.

The woman, a taxi-dri­ver was tak­en to the San­gre Grande Hos­pi­tal where she was treat­ed but re­mains trau­ma­tized.

Her ve­hi­cle was re­cov­ered and the man ar­rest­ed.

He is to be charged with kid­nap­ping, rob­bery, and lar­ce­ny of a ve­hi­cle.

Po­lice re­port­ed that around 1:30 pm to­day the vic­tim was ply­ing her taxi, a sil­ver Nis­san Sen­tra along the East­ern Main Road, when she was stopped by a pas­sen­ger, a man of African de­scent and drove off.

The vic­tim stopped her ve­hi­cle to drop off a pas­sen­ger at Cleaver Road, Ari­ma and as the pas­sen­ger alight­ed the man put the ve­hi­cle ‘s gear on neu­tral and or­dered the fe­male dri­ver to the front pas­sen­ger seat, oc­cu­pied the dri­ver’s seat and drove off.

The vic­tim re­port­ed that the man or­dered her to re­main qui­et as he was not go­ing to hurt her and or­dered she pass the cash.

She oblig­ed, but the man kept dri­ving in­to the Churchill Roo­sevelt High­way and turned in­to Cu­mu­to and in­to San­gre Grande on­to the To­co Main Road. The vic­tim told po­lice she was scared and her fright de­vel­oped when she saw the man dri­ving in­to To­co Road.

PCs Thomas and Ren­nie of San­gre Grande Traf­fic Branch were di­rect­ing traf­fic be­cause of WASA re­pair­ing a bro­ken wa­ter line and cause the dri­ver to slow down, the vic­tim opened the door and rushed out call­ing the po­lice of­fi­cers for help.

PCs Thomas and Ren­nie re­spond­ed and the dri­ver tried to speed off but came in­to con­tact with an­oth­er ve­hi­cle, when he opened the door of the ve­hi­cle and dashed for his es­cape. He was sub­dued af­ter a short chased, ar­rest­ed and tak­en to the San­gre Grande Po­lice Sta­tion, where he was hand­ed over to Sgt Harp­er of San­gre Grande CID.

The man a 40-year-old of Sher­wood Street, Ari­ma is be­ing in­ter­ro­gat­ed by po­lice of­fi­cers and re­ports re­vealed that he is well known by the Ari­ma po­lice.

In­ves­ti­ga­tors said the vic­tim wept as she made her re­port and thanked PCs Thomas and Ren­nie as they both saved her life. She was be­ing tak­en to To­co and God knows what was the kid­nap­per’s in­ten­tion. “Thank GOD I have been res­cued from this crim­i­nal el­e­ment.”