-questions continue about abduction, police role
Beharry `Natoo’ Dookie, whose daughter Rorhema was abducted on Wednesday night and released on Thursday night, yesterday said that he does not fear for his family’s safety but knows “they must be careful”.
Rorhema Dookie, 21, had just exited classes from a school located along Thomas Street, North Cummingsburg when she and her waiting boyfriend, Joel Oudkerk, were attacked by three men around 8 pm on Wednesday. Oudkerk, reports had indicated, was hit twice to the head by one of the armed men. After her boyfriend was rendered helpless the men forced Rorhema into a car and escaped.
Well-wishers and relatives had crowded Dookie’s Pike Street, Kitty home that night to lend their support to the grieving father and his family. A source had told Stabroek News that Rorhema’s abductors had demanded a ransom shortly after she was kidnapped. However, a happy Dookie speaking to this newspaper on Thursday night after he was reunited with Rorhema said that he had not paid a ransom. Dookie said on Thursday night that he “almost” paid a ransom but was told by his advisor not to.
Rorhema had recounted that she’d just left her classes that night and approached her boyfriend when a vehicle pulled up and some men approached them, hit her boyfriend and one of them grabbed her. There were three men, according to her, and they put a cloth over her face and took her to a house in the city where she was deposited in a room.
Dookie reported yesterday afternoon that he hadn’t yet heard from the police about their progress on locating his daughter’s abductors. Police, Dookie further said, were supposed to go to his house to take a statement from the young woman yesterday afternoon.
This newspaper also learnt that following Rorhema’s kidnapping on Wednesday night her boyfriend, Oudkerk, was taken into police custody. Efforts made to contact the young man on Thursday before the young woman returned to her family were futile. However, sources said that Oudkerk was forced to seek legal counsel on Thursday and the High Court subsequently issued an order for his release from police custody.
During a spate of kidnappings several years ago stiff anti-kidnapping legislation had been passed by the government and a police anti-kidnapping group was also set up. Senior Superintendent John Sauers, acting in the absence of police Public Relations Officer Ivelaw Whittaker, told Stabroek News yesterday that the police anti-kidnapping group was “still around”.
“Dem still around, dem still around,” Sauers said yesterday. “The police force trained those people in the anti-kidnapping group and those people still in the force.”
Sauers did not respond when asked whether the anti-kidnapping unit was still functioning or had become dormant but only indicated that the ranks who were trained to be in that unit were still members of the Guyana Police Force. Police are yet to issue a statement regarding the matter. Sauers did not respond when asked why police have not said anything regarding the kidnapping.
The house
“They put something over her head and drop her off…” was all Dookie told Stabroek News yesterday when questioned a second time about how his daughter managed to gain her freedom.
Rorhema could not tell Stabroek News on Thursday night where her abductors had taken her but said she was placed in a room with a mattress on the floor where she spent Wednesday night. She’d said that she wasn’t tied up or treated badly. Thursday evening, Rorhema had related, a woman burst into the room and asked her who she was but she did not want to give her name because she was scared.
“She keep asking me who I was and I didn’t want tell her I is the girl who get kidnap because I was frighten. But she keep asking me is like she think I with one of the men and she is one of them girlfriend so I don’t know if she think… She then hold my hand and pull me out the house into the street and plenty people come around and I say I is the girl who get kidnap and another lady carry me to the station [East La Penitence Police Station],” she recounted. It would appear from what her father said that this woman put something over her head and then took her to the police station. Why the woman was not held and why the abductors would leave Rorhema unattended are still questions to be answered.
The young woman’s account of how she gained freedom “doesn’t quite add up” a police source told this newspaper yesterday. It is still not clear, the source said, who this woman is that she [Rorhema] said discovered her in the house nor do we know the identity of the woman who she said “dropped her off” at the East La Penitence Police Station. Police, the source said, have still not managed to locate the house in which Rorhema said she was being held.
When Stabroek News visited Dookie at his business place, Natoo’s, shortly after 5 pm yesterday police had not yet arrived to take a statement from his daughter. Stabroek News brought to the man’s attention one version of the report regarding his daughter’s freedom which stated that she was blindfolded and dropped at the Tucville bridge. Dookie said that what he and his daughter told Stabroek News on Thursday night about how she ended up at the East La Penitence Police Station was the truth.
“I don’t know where Kaieteur News got their version of the report from,” Dookie said, “but that is not what happened…what we told you Thursday night is what happened and I don’t know where these other versions are coming from…the same newspaper [Kaieteur News] was here earlier today to speak to me but I sent them away.”
The man refused to say anything else regarding his daughter’s abduction and subsequent freedom. He stated he refused to live in fear and that while he and his family would be careful, “life has to go on”.
Meanwhile, Stabroek News visited the East La Penitence area but residents there said that they only learnt that Rorhema was being held in a house somewhere in the vicinity when they saw the newspapers.
“Listen I live right here and I can see the Tucville bridge from my window and I was outside around 8 pm last night,” one woman said, “and if there was a crowd here when that girl was dropped here blindfolded then I woulda see but I didn’t see anything strange happening in the area last night [Thursday].”