Missing Trinidad fisherman may have been kidnapped by Spanish speaking pirates

(Trinidad Guardian) The fam­i­ly of a 28-year-old con­struc­tion work­er is fear­ful he may have been kid­napped by pi­rates while fish­ing off the coast of Ce­dros al­most a week ago.

Ac­cord­ing to re­ports, Ju­dah “Flats” Ram­nar­ine, of Mafek­ing Vil­lage, Ma­yaro, along with cap­tain Dionne Mur­ray and Ke­ston Marc­hand from the Oropouche area, went on a fish­ing trip on Jan­u­ary 13 aboard the boat “Maria”.

They left from Ota­heite Bay and made their way to Ce­dros.

Around 9 pm, how­ev­er, four armed men, who were speak­ing Span­ish, pulled along­side their ves­sel. One of the armed men board­ed the fish­er­men’s ves­sel and sig­nalled to his ac­com­plices to join him.

Ac­cord­ing to re­ports, Marc­hand and Mur­ray jumped off and were res­cued by a pass­ing ves­sel around 7 am the next day. They were tak­en to the Oropouche fish­ing bay and lat­er made a re­port to the po­lice. Nei­ther Ram­nar­ine nor the Maria has been seen since the in­ci­dent.

Ram­nar­ine’s sis­ter, Key­moi Ram­nar­ine told Guardian Me­dia that the fam­i­ly is trau­ma­tised by the in­ci­dent.

“We are wait­ing on word be­cause they (TTPS) told us that if it is they were hold­ing him for ran­som in Venezuela, they would have con­tact­ed us but no one con­tact­ed us as yet,” she said.

Key­moi said that the fam­i­ly is ac­tu­al­ly pray­ing that he is in Venezuela.

“If that is the sce­nario, then we would know what hap­pened to him but just not know­ing, it’s re­al­ly frus­trat­ing.”

She de­scribed her broth­er as a hard-work­ing per­son.