Taxi driver to be charged

(Trinidad Express) Salis Mack – the “PH” taxi driver charged with kidnapping and robbing eight-year-old Leah Lammy in a case still unsolved – is to be charged with the murders of two women found tortured and killed.

Mack’s lover, a 27-year-old clothing store clerk working at the Grand Bazaar Mall, is to appear in court charged with receiving jewels stolen off the body of one murdered woman, and from a still missing woman – Sally Lobai – who was last seen alive in Chaguanas on February 11.

Acting Director of Public Prosecutions, Carla Brown-Antoine, gave the instructions on Monday to charge Mack after reviewing the case that broke when police raided a house in Felicity, Chaguanas, last Wednesday and arrested the woman with a bag of stolen jewels.

Assistant Superintendents of Police Johnny Abraham and Stanley Ramdeen have statements from witnesses and from a woman and intend using DNA technology, and forensic evidence from a car, to build their case.

Mack is to be charged with the murders of schoolgirl Devika Lalman, 15, and Gail Durity, 19, when he reappears in the Chaguanas Magis-trates’ Court on Friday. He also has a pending rape charge in the Arima Magistrates’ Court.

Lalman had travelled from her home at Las Lomas into Chaguanas to purchase school supplies. Her body was found in a Cunupia ricefield five days later, battered to death, and possibly raped.

Durity, of Dass Trace, Enterprise, was last seen by her family the night of June 1, 2008. She had a squabble with a boyfriend and left home in a hired “PH” taxi.

The following day, Durity’s body was found near a beach on a coconut estate in Manzanilla. Her throat, head and face had been cut open and the rope used to bind her feet had cut through the Achilles tendons. She had been raped, a forensic examination found.

It was Durity’s and Lobai’s jewelry that was allegedly found in the possession of Mack’s lover.

A series of crimes linked to “PH” taxis concentrated in Central Trinidad has been the source of fear by female commuters and loathing by politicians who have accused the police of failing to crack down.

Mack, 35, has been in solitary confinement at the Maximum Security Prison Arouca since March 3 – the day he went to court charged with kidnapping Leah and with stealing her cell phone.

Leah has not been seen since leaving her Edinburgh Government Primary School February 10, the day before Lobai vanished.

Police believe they can also close the case on the disturbing cases of 18-year-old Riana Parag, who went missing December 16 last year after travelling into Chaguanas from her Longdenville home to do Christmas shopping.

In the cases of Lammy, Lobai and Parag, desperate family calling their cellphones heard the voice of a man answering to say he had kidnapped them. The man asked for a TT$300,000 in each case. The man never answered the phones again.

Police are also taking a second look at the unsolved murder of 53 -year-old taxi driver Margaret Constance, who was last seen in Chaguanas one night last September.

A week later, her body was found along a forest road in Tabaquite, Central Trinidad.

The killer tied her hands, gagged her, and strangled her.