Trinidad: Teen fisherman tells of ordeal in Venezuela after ransom paid with KFC

(Trinidad Guardian) Af­ter be­ing kid­napped at sea and held cap­tive in a Venezue­lan for­est for over a month, 17-year-old Ken­rick Mor­gan has height­ened his am­bi­tion to join the Coast Guard so that he can pro­tect oth­ers from suf­fer­ing the same fate.

Mor­gan, a stu­dent of the Moru­ga Sec­ondary School, is ex­pect­ed to write this year’s CSEC ex­am­i­na­tion. He said with pira­cy be­com­ing more fre­quent and his ex­pe­ri­ence as a vic­tim, he wants to pro­tect the na­tion’s bor­ders. Al­though he has lost a whole month of class­es, he said he will be push­ing hard­er with his stud­ies.

“I go to school still. I plan to go to school and see what I get. I want­ed to come out an army man or a coast guard. I don’t think that might come through. I don’t know. I am pray­ing. My fam­i­ly is pray­ing, my moth­er is pray­ing, every­body is pray­ing,” Mor­gan said.

Mor­gan and his cousin Kendall Singh, 23, of Basse Terre Vil­lage, Moru­ga re­turned to Trinidad on Tues­day af­ter their fam­i­lies ne­go­ti­at­ed with the cap­tors for an ex­change.

Mor­gan’s fam­i­ly paid US$700 in food sup­plies and US$1300 cash and a buck­et of KFC. Singh’s fam­i­ly paid US$12,000, two tele­vi­sions, two box­es of en­gine oil, a cell phone and a tablet.

It was a re­lief for the two fam­i­lies as the kid­nap­pers had ini­tial­ly de­mand­ed US$40,000, then US$20,000 and five iPhones.

At Mor­gan’s home in Gran Chemin yes­ter­day, his moth­er, Lin­da Boodoo burst in­to tears af­ter weeks of in­tense prayers paid off.

Boodoo said dur­ing their de­ten­tion, a pho­to­graph was sent to the fam­i­ly, show­ing Singh on the ground with a gun aimed at his head.

Her heart felt re­lieved for the first time since Jan­u­ary 12 when Mor­gan and Singh left the Moru­ga shore along with a Venezue­lan col­league to fish off the coast of Morne Di­a­blo.

Mor­gan told re­porters that six Venezue­lan men ap­proached in a high-speed fish­ing boat with guns aimed at them.

The gun­men or­dered them to jump over­board. He said they plead­ed with the gun­men be­cause they would have sure­ly drowned. The gun­men took them to their home­land through a riv­er un­til they came up­on a camp in Ma­turin.

“The ex­pe­ri­ence was not good. It was very bad. I hard­ly ate, there was plen­ty mos­qui­to and bad care. Some­times we got some­thing to eat in the morn­ing and that was it for the whole day. They gave us arepa and some kind of dumpling. We were free in some bush­es be­cause they didn’t re­al­ly busi­ness. All they want­ed was some mon­ey. They had their house some­where else and they just hid us in the bush so no­body could see us,” Mor­gan said.

There was no show­er, toi­lets and the wa­ter they drank came from the riv­er.

The trau­ma was so great that Mor­gan said he con­tem­plat­ed sui­cide, at­tempt­ing to kill his cap­tors and run­ning away.

How­ev­er, he kept pray­ing and had faith that he would re­turn home. One day, a boat ap­proached and their cap­tors told them to hide as it was ban­dits.

They ran some dis­tance through the for­est and at­tempt­ed to es­cape, but Singh could not keep up. The kid­nap­pers chased them on hors­es and they even­tu­al­ly sur­ren­dered.

Dur­ing their de­ten­tion, they were moved to sev­er­al hous­es, ranch­es and camps along the riv­er trail and were guard­ed by three men.

But with weeks go­ing by and con­stant ne­go­ti­a­tion with Singh and Mor­gan’s fam­i­ly, the kid­nap­pers re­alised they were not wealthy.

On Mon­day, the kid­nap­pers dropped Mor­gan to a wrecked ves­sel be­tween Venezuela and T&T. There, his un­cle, Reynold Ramkhelawan and an­oth­er man picked him up and left the mon­ey and food such as oil, flour, de­odor­ant, toi­letries and canned items.

They re­turned to Erin and he was tak­en for a med­ical check-up and it was found that his potas­si­um lev­el was low. He spent the night with his sis­ter in Princes Town and went to the San Fer­nan­do Gen­er­al Hos­pi­tal yes­ter­day for treat­ment. Singh said he no longer likes fish­ing in the sea and his on­ly in­ter­ac­tion on­ward will be a beach bath.

Ramkhele­wan, a fish­er­man said, ap­proach­ing the wreck to pick up Mor­gan was a mat­ter of life and death. Al­though he was wary that the kid­nap­pers could have been there, armed with guns, he need­ed to bring his nephew home.

He said that fish­ing has be­come very dan­ger­ous, fish­er­men on­ly knew how to fish and it is what they have to do to sur­vive.

When Guardian Me­dia vis­it­ed Singh’s home, no one was there. How­ev­er, his broth­er Pe­ter, speak­ing by phone, said that his broth­er went for med­ical treat­ment for a swollen arm.