Rennie Coolman, the widower of murder victim Vindra Naipaul-Coolman, yesterday admitted under cross-examination that he did nothing to assist his wife during the harrowing five-minute period when her kidnappers snatched her from her car outside their Lange Park, Chaguanas, home and took her away. Coolman, the campus manager at the University of T&T, was the sole state witness called yesterday in the trial, in which 12 men are accused of murdering the Xtra Foods CEO after she was kidnapped on December 19, 2006. Coolman told special state prosecutor Dana Seetahal, SC, that he was scared when he saw a masked gunman outside their home after he heard his wife’s car pull into the driveway. He said he was at the couple’s Radix Road home when his wife of just over a year arrived around 8.30 pm. At the time he was having dinner and the housekeeper, Rasheedan Yacoob, went to the door. He said he heard Yacoob scream and he rushed to the locked burglarproofing gate and saw a masked gunman, who turned in his direction, so he ran back to the living room.
There he heard his wife’s screams and six gunshots before the car sped off. “I felt very, very scared,” he said.
