Taxi driver arrested in kidnap hoax
Stabroek News
November 15, 2003
The police yesterday arrested a taxi-driver after a kidnap hoax, the second such false alarm in less than a month, and they have launched a hunt for another man suspected to be involved.
In the latest incident, the police said a man turned up at the home of a housewife at Enmore, East Coast Demerara yesterday morning and told her that her husband had been kidnapped.
The woman's husband had apparently left to work in the Golden Grove backdam at about 5:30 am yesterday. A release from the Police Public Relations Office said ranks and relatives of the reported kidnapped victim launched a search in the backdam and found him and a friend "alive and well".
Meanwhile, the taxi driver who took the news to the housewife at about 9.30 am was arrested, since, according to the police, there was no evidence that a kidnapping or attempted kidnapping ever occurred.
The release says efforts are being made to contact the man who took the message to the wife.
In similar circumstances last month, the police were called out to grapple with another false report that an elderly farmer from Annandale had been kidnapped.
In that instance, a man had told the farmer's son that his "daddy just get kidnap" and by the time he rushed home to tell his mother, someone placed a call to the house with the same report. The farmer was subsequently found at work in the backdam.