(Jamaica Observer) Wavell Wayne Hinds has two dates firmly etched in his mind — dates that could have yielded different results had luck not been on his side.
However, April 23, 2006, remains the more telling of the two, as the Jamaica and West Indies cricketer — faced with criminal acts that pushed him against the wall — contemplated a meeting with St Peter that luckily for him, was postponed.
Hinds, 35, had grown immensely popular over the years. He had captained Camperdown High School in Under-14, Under-16 and Manning Cup football. He also gave instructions to his teammates in ‘Colts’ or Under-16, and Sunlight Cup (Under-19) cricket for the East Kingston school that had him on its register from 1988 to 1996.
His leadership skills were never in question, as he captained teams that included Jamaica national footballer Ricardo Fuller, who now represents Stoke City in the English Premiership.
Unknown to many, Fuller was a talented left-handed batsman who also bowled offspin on the Camperdown cricket team.
Hinds, though, now a first year journalism student in the degree programme at the Caribbean Institute of Media and Communication, University of the West Indies (Mona), worked his way up the ranks of Jamaica’s cricket, eventually representing the Under-19 team, the national team, which he also captained, and went on to don the colours of the West Indies.
So when he turned up at a food store in Twin Gates Plaza along Constant Spring Road in St Andrew around 11 o’clock on the ill-fated night, never did he expect the reception that he received.
“I went to purchase a meal and after coming out of the vehicle, I decided to return to the vehicle to collect something from it and upon doing that and about to close the door, a car pulled up behind me and then I only heard somebody telling me not to move and instructing me to go back into the vehicle on the passenger side,” Hinds said, recounting his ordeal with gunmen who took away his Toyota Land Cruiser Prado sports utility vehicle and robbed him of other items.
“By glancing on either side of me, I realised that they were men with guns forcing me to the other side of the vehicle. I followed their instructions. They drove away the vehicle and while they continued to ask me for stuff — money, jewellery, including chains, watches, cellphones — they drove me somewhere in the Cassia Park/Eastwood Park Gardens area before they released me,” he said.
“They were being very aggressive, roughing me up all the time, one telling me ‘hey, you a police yu nuh, and we a go kill you.’
“They didn’t ask me things like where I lived and so on, but they kept saying that I was a policeman and they were going to kill me.
“I felt threatened to the point where… being killed, I felt, was highly possible, but I was more resigned to the view that because they were brandishing so many guns, that I would have been shot.
“I told them that I was a sportsman, never told them my name or anything. I thought that if I gave them my name and that I was a West Indies cricketer it might have triggered them to want to demand more. While driving, they had two guns at my head at the same time. Two guys sat in the back of the vehicle, hitting me with two guns all the time in my head, while they were demanding things,” Hinds said.
Throughout the ordeal Hinds thought to himself that his time left on Earth was limited.
“Upon leaving Twin Gates with them, I always remember from watching newscasts that 90 per cent of victims who leave the point of abduction always got killed. So I resigned my mind to think that I would have at least been shot, I don’t know if I would have died from it, but I thought I would have shot. I knew I had to deal with it. I tried to coax them out of shooting me or killing me, by telling them that they had the vehicle, and that they took everything that I had and they should leave me alone now… they could take everything and go,” the Portmore-born Hinds said.
He recalled his disappointment that no one assisted him by raising an alarm, although there were other people in the car park, some of whom, he was sure, saw what had happened.
Along the journey toward the unknown, the motor vehicle that pulled up beside him at Twin Gates followed closely behind the SUV. Each time that they took things from the abducted cricketer, the criminals would stop and transfer the items to the trailing car.
Item after item, one by one, the articles kept going through the transfer window, until it appeared that all the valuables had run out. In the end, after he was pushed from the vehicle, that he has not seen again to this day, a nearby police station was the next stop. There, he went through the formalities of reporting the crime with the hope that he would retrieve some of his belongings.
Law enforcers put the loss of the personal effects at $500,000. The Toyota Prado was valued in the region of $3 million.
“It was the first time that I had come face to face with anything like this,” Hinds said upon reflection.
Still, while crediting the professionalism of the police in investigating the matter, Hinds, like many Jamaicans who have been victims of crime, opted not to press on with trying to locate and identify his captors, if the investigators made a breakthrough.
There was a ray of hope at one point, he recalled, as the police called him in.
“At one point the police said that they thought they had suspects and they wanted me to take part in an identification parade, but I never did,” Hinds admitted.
“Given my standing (in the society), I didn’t think that it was the wisest thing to do, because if you point out a man today, it could cost you. I see witnesses dying 24/7. It just didn’t make sense, because whatever I lost could be achieved over time, so I just let it pass,” he said.
I felt that I could recognise the men if I had seen them again, but I wasn’t interested in doing that. Based upon the landscape and our safety culture, I didn’t feel that it would be safe to pursue the matter, given the fact that I was a public figure. If I wasn’t a public figure it would be easier to try and follow it up,” he added.
The near-death experience of the left-handed batsman who, at the top of his game, also bowled a stiff medium pace and kept wicket fairly competently, has resulted in him retreating into his safety shell like an overly shy turtle.
“I felt overly cautious and was bordering on being paranoid as once I don’t know you, you become a suspect. I have been overly vigilant since then,” he revealed.
The incident brought home to Hinds the reality that many Jamaicans face daily. He did not think that because he was a Jamaica and West Indies representative that he should have been treated better by the criminals, and wants more to be done to protect the nation’s citizens.
“It was a very empty feeling as it relates to the fact that yes, I represent my country and the region, but I had to ask, why does a citizen have to go through all of this? If you are a law-abiding citizen, working and paying taxes in a country, why is it so horrible that you can’t walk safely in your country? It just speaks to the kind of culture that we have and have grown to accept as a people, in terms of safety and security,” he said.
“I know that all the efforts have been made to kill the monster of crime, but at the same time it’s not heartening, knowing that you have to contend with being as vigilant as one ought to be, or as any Jamaican is at this present time, when you are living in this country, because even if you are at home, you still have to be that vigilant looking through your window to make sure that your surroundings are safe.
“It is very disheartening. I don’t expect that because I am a national player I should be treated differently from the regular man on the street, because everybody should be safe and feel safe. Society on a whole is in a very bad state and it’s up to the citizens to make it right,” Hinds said.
The second incident pales in comparison to his abduction.
Five years before, while the West Indies toured Australia in 2001, Hinds had to flee, in Usain Bolt style, from a group of white Australian drunkards who attacked a few of the visiting cricketers outside a night club in the Australian city of Melbourne in February.
In the end, Hinds escaped the wrath of the Aussies, but there was no such luck for another team member, Marlon Black of Trinidad & Tobago, who was badly beaten and had to be hospitalised.
“It was not as serious as the incident in Kingston. It was just some people who attacked us while we were on our way home as we tried to get away from the trouble spot. But they kept following us, then eventually caught up with us and a couple of the guys hit Marlon Black,” Hinds said.
“When it was happening I felt threatened, but at the same time, you realised that they were just hoodlums or hooligans who just wanted to make mischief, so it’s not like people having a motive.
“Before there was any exchange of words, they (attackers) were happy going about their personal business, until Marlon and them had words… it was an argument — they were throwing bottles loosely and wildly and Marlon told them to be careful that they did not hit someone, and they didn’t take kindly to Marlon telling them to be cautious about what they were doing, so they attacked him,” Hinds said.
“These two incidents were two too many,” Hinds stated.
Hinds played 45 Test, 119 one-day internationals, and five Twenty/20 matches for the West Indies over a period spanning a decade.
He scored 2,606 Test runs at an average of 33 and took 16 wickets in that longer form of the game. In one-day internationals, Hinds had 2,880 runs at a 29 average.
Apart from Jamaica and the West Indies, Hinds also played club cricket for Ahmedabad Rockets in the then Indian Cricket League and Derbyshire in the English County Championship.
