Several hours after a teenager contacted her brother via cellular phone to say that she’d been abducted hundreds of Lindeners assisted police in a massive hunt which ended just after 7 last evening.
After residents, police officers and members of Com-munity Policing Groups spent the majority of their waking hours searching for 16-year-old Alicia McAlister she was found along the Block 22 Access Road, Wisroc in Linden.
The teen contacted relatives shortly after 6 pm yesterday to tell them that her abductors had indicated that they would let her go. Just before 7 pm McAlister contacted relatives again to say that “the men” had dropped her off at the Block 22 location. When police and relatives showed up at the location they found the teen in a dishevelled state with her hands tied in front of her and she was holding her cellular phone.
At 9.45 last night the teen was still at the Linden Hospital Complex where she was rushed by police and relatives. McAlister, a close relative told Stabroek News, had not said a word since she was discovered and only kept crying and complaining for pain in the neck. However, there were no visible marks of violence about her body. McAlister is under police guard.
The teen, relatives said, left her Block 22 Wisroc home on Saturday for rehearsals at church. During her session at church, a colleague who was present at the event told this newspaper, the 16-year-old was constantly on her cellular phone and was in a hurry to leave. When she did leave rehearsals at about 8 pm, during a power outage, she went to a nearby internet café.
In a press release early last evening police said: “Acting on a report made to ranks on a police patrol about 02:00hrs today Sunday October 24, 2010, ranks in Division “E&F’ Linden, the Joint Services and members of the Community have mounted a massive search to find a young girl who reportedly went missing about 20:00hrs yesterday” and that “It has so far been ascertained from a brother of Alicia McAllister … that by way of a text
message, she told him that she was on her way from church walking, when she was abducted.”
Several vehicles, police also said, owned by residents in the area, were also involved in the search.
Commander of Police E&F Division, Assistant Commissioner David Ramnarine told this newspaper that McAlister, while communicating with her brother by text messaging after making the abduction allegation, said that there were two other females with her who appeared to have been “drugged”. However, he’d stressed that these were only allegations and police have been unable to ascertain whether there was any truth to them.
After the teen made allegations that there were two more females with her, Assistant Commissioner Ramnarine said, police called for back up from headquarters and other points between Linden and the city. Response, Ramnarine said, was immediate and all those involved in the search worked tirelessly.
Local mobile company Digicel was also involved in the search for the teen. Ramnarine told this newspaper that the phone company was able to provide police with the general location where McAlister first called her brother at 2 am yesterday.
“This matter is being investigated seriously by police…investigations are still ongoing and there are still many details still to be obtained,” Ramnarine told Stabroek News last night.
