Investigators were up to press time last evening still looking for Gail Perreira, 29, an administrative assistant at the Delmur Shipping Company, who was kidnapped in front of her Agricola home on Thursday night.
The kidnappers initially asked for a $20 million ransom but later dropped the figure to $10 million.
In a press release yesterday, police said that detectives were investigating the reported kidnapping of Perreira, an office assistant and resident of Evan Phillips Park, Agricola, East Bank Demerara. The abduction occurred around 8:00pm on Thursday.
According to the police, Perreira went home by taxi and upon her arrival a black Raum motor vehicle drove up and three men exited, one of whom was armed with a handgun. “The men stuck up the taxi-driver, placing him to lie on the ground, then abducted Gail Perreira and drove away with her in their vehicle and also took away the taxi-driver’s motor vehicle,” police said.
Subsequently, Perreira’s brother, Roger Perreira, received a phone call from a man who demanded a ransom of $20 million in exchange for her safe return. The figure was later
reduced.
A report was made to the Ruimveldt Police Station and the taxi-driver’s vehicle was recovered by the police on the roadway in front of the West Ruimveldt Primary School.
Residents living close to where the incident occurred described the family as quiet, since “they kept to themselves.”
When Stabroek News visited the woman’s home yesterday afternoon, a man who said he was a brother maintained that the woman had not yet been located and that the kidnappers were asking for a $10 million ransom. He said that there was not much to say since an older brother was the person designated to speak with the media.
However, several efforts to contact the older brother were unsuccessful.
The brother that this newspaper spoke with at Perreira’s Agricola residence said that he was baffled as to the reason behind the kidnapping, noting that the woman never expressed fears for her safety or indicated that she was in any kind of trouble. Subsequent efforts to contact relatives for updates and further comments were unsuccessful.
Gail Perreira’s boss Desmond Sears told Stabroek News yesterday afternoon that she left work sometime after 8pm in a cab attached to a Campbellville taxi service that she used regularly.
He said that the woman, who has been working with his company for about five years, was her usual self when she left and gave no indication that anything might have been troubling her. He added that he had never heard the woman expressing any fear for her safety.
Sears said that it was Perreira’s mother who called him, informing that the woman was robbed and that “the vehicle left with her.”
The Agricola resident is the second woman to be kidnapped this year.
On August 28, Rorhema Dookie had just exited a school on Thomas Street, North Cummingsburg, to meet her waiting boyfriend, Joel Oudkerk, when three armed kidnappers struck.
They hit the young man twice in his head and grabbed Dookie, who is the daughter of popular Pike Street businessman Beharry ‘Natoo’ Dookie.
The next day, she was put out of a shack in the Stevedore Squatting Area by a woman who thought she was the girlfriend of one of the kidnappers. While a ransom was demanded, none had been paid.
Police later raided the Stevedore Squatting Area and three men have since been charged over the incident.
