Sascha Wil­son

Se­nior Re­porter

sascha.wil­son@guardian.co.tt

Kid­napped out­side a phar­ma­cy, held cap­tive overnight and forced to with­draw a large sum of mon­ey from a bank, 77-year-old Tar­ran Gal­lai be­lieves his faith in God helped him sur­vive the or­deal.

It was the sec­ond time in sev­en months that he had been ab­duct­ed un­der sim­i­lar cir­cum­stances and robbed.

Gal­lai said he was ab­duct­ed from Cou­va in Feb­ru­ary and held overnight. He owns prop­er­ty there. He was robbed of $5,000 and in­jured dur­ing that or­deal.

He said his ab­duc­tors made him be­lieve he was be­ing held in Laven­tille, but he was ac­tu­al­ly be­ing kept at Sun­rees Road, Pe­nal. He was re­leased at 2 am the fol­low­ing day.

Gal­lai suf­fered no phys­i­cal in­juries dur­ing the sec­ond in­ci­dent but has been left trau­ma­tised.

He re­called that on Sun­day he went to a phar­ma­cy to buy med­ica­tion for his eyes. As he re­turned to his ve­hi­cle, he was grabbed by two ab­duc­tors, forced in­to a ve­hi­cle and threat­ened with death. He said he com­plied with their or­ders.

“They just grabbed me from the back, put me in the car, and tell me, this time they will fin­ish with me. I was scared but I tried to re­main strong,” Gal­lai re­called.

He said the men took him to a house along Dum­fries Road and held him there overnight, with his hands and feet bound with duct tape to a toi­let bowl.

He said the oth­er man took his bank card and told him he was go­ing shop­ping. On­line records show that with­drawals were made from Gal­lai’s ac­count at two ATM ma­chines and that three point-of-sale trans­ac­tions were made at su­per­mar­kets in Char­lieville, Cunu­pia and Freeport.

The fol­low­ing morn­ing, Gal­lai was tak­en to a Re­pub­lic Bank branch and in­struct­ed to with­draw more than $100,000 from his ac­count. The ab­duc­tors wait­ed in a car in an iso­lat­ed area not far from the bank on Mar­ket Street, Mara­bel­la.

He said he did as in­struct­ed be­cause he was afraid.

Gal­lai said he went in­to the bank alone, with­drew the mon­ey and placed it in a bag. The sus­pects then in­struct­ed him to throw the bag in­to the trunk of their ve­hi­cle be­fore they sped off.

He re­turned to the bank, with­drew some more mon­ey to buy food and trav­el home. On­ly af­ter he got home did he learn that his ve­hi­cle, a Toy­ota Yaris, had been found on fire at Ocean View Rig Road, St Mar­garet’s Vil­lage, Clax­ton Bay, at about 10.30 pm on Sun­day.

Based on what his cap­tors said, Gal­lai be­lieves they may have been in­volved in his first kid­nap­ping.

He be­lieves he is be­ing tar­get­ed and is now afraid to leave home alone.

“Peo­ple, their moral­i­ty is not to do things, to live. They’re try­ing to live on as par­a­sites. That is the whole crim­i­nol­o­gy in Trinidad. Peo­ple don’t want to work. And that caus­es that,” he said.

De­spite be­ing tar­get­ed twice, Gal­lai said he har­bours no ill will to­wards his ab­duc­tors.

“All I want to do, I wish them luck for their lives,” he said.

Gal­lai is warn­ing el­der­ly peo­ple to take ex­tra pre­cau­tions, es­pe­cial­ly when vis­it­ing fi­nan­cial in­sti­tu­tions.

He al­so ad­vised peo­ple to be more alert when go­ing about their busi­ness.

Po­lice have not yet ar­rest­ed any­one in con­nec­tion with ei­ther in­ci­dent.