Nagra Plunkett, Staff Reporter
WESTERN BUREAU:
FIVE ARMED men, posing as policemen, abducted a man and his girlfriend from their home in the community of Hendon in Glendevon, St. James on Saturday night.
Inspector Paul Bernard of the Montego Bay Criminal Investigation Branch told The Gleaner that up to yesterday afternoon, his team had "no lead concerning the whereabouts of the missing couple".
The couple has been identified as Dwight 'Rohan' Gray, a 35-year-old mechanic, and 36-year-old businesswoman Hercent James-Richards, also known as 'Raine'.
SEPARATED
Mrs. Richards has been separated from her husband for the past three years and has been in a relationship with Gray for less than two.
Police reports are that the couple was at home with five children, three of their own, including a 23-month-old baby, when the incident occurred. The children were not harmed, but an undetermined sum of cash and three cellular phones were stolen and the place ransacked.
The family was reportedly at home about 9:30 p.m. when they heard a knock on the front door and someone claiming to be "the police" demanded that they open the door.
The request was granted and upon opening the door, five armed men entered demanding cellphones and cash.
The items were handed over and the couple was then forced into Richards' white Toyota Corolla station wagon, registered 1044 DQ, which was driven away by the kidnappers.
BRIT KIDNAPPED
An alarm was raised and citizens called the police.
On September 10 last year, 53-year-old British national Alfred Stephenson of Luthon, England and Desmond Douglas were kidnapped along Norman Manley Boulevard in Negril, Westmoreland.
A $10 million ransom, later reduced to $4 million, was subsequently demanded for their safe return. Douglas was released four days later by his kidnappers to collect the ransom.
Police set up a sting operation at the Negril Transportation Centre during which one of the kidnappers, 29-year-old ex-convict Antonio Brown of Constitution Hill in St. Andrew, was fatally shot.
Stephenson subsequently managed to escape after his abductors fled the house where he was being held when they learnt that police had killed their crony at the ransom pick-up point.
