Ashley Boodoo speaks to the media about her brother, Kenrick Joseph, who was kidnapped along with his cousin Kendell Singh. Photo: T&T Guardian

A US$40,000 ran­som has been de­mand­ed for their re­turn.

Sources said that both men were from av­er­age fam­i­lies who could not af­ford to pay the US$40,000 ran­som.

One source said that mon­ey was owed to a Venezue­lan jefe by one of Singh's col­leagues.

Mor­gan, 17, a Form Five stu­dent of the Moru­ga Sec­ondary School, lives in a hum­ble home with his fam­i­ly in Grand Chemin, Moru­ga. Singh, 23, a fish­er­man, lives with his fam­i­ly a few kilo­me­tres away in Basse Terre.

Mor­gan’s sis­ter, Ash­ley Boodoo said that there was no way her fam­i­ly could come up with that mon­ey. Boodoo said that her broth­er left home around 2.30 pm on Sat­ur­day. He told her moth­er that he was go­ing to Singh’s house and from there they would go fish­ing. It was the last time his moth­er, Lin­da Boodoo, saw him. She said Mor­gan has no phone so they were un­able to con­tact him

Missing

On Sun­day, Singh’s moth­er, Joy, con­tact­ed Lin­da, in­form­ing her that their sons had gone miss­ing.

“Ap­par­ent­ly like the Span­ish, where they are now, con­tact­ed one of Singh’s broth­er, say­ing that they need US$40,000 to re­turn them home safe­ly. We don’t know where they are, all we know is that they said they are in Venezuela,” Boodoo said. The

Boodoos re­port­ed the dis­ap­pear­ance to Moru­ga po­lice on Mon­day.

A po­lice re­port stat­ed that the cousins were fish­ing off the Moru­ga wa­ters when they were kid­napped and pos­si­bly tak­en to Venezuela. How­ev­er, Boodoo said that a Venezue­lan na­tion­al al­so left on the fish­ing trip.

The kid­nap­ping came just af­ter the Unit­ed Arab Emi­rates news site, the Na­tion­al, pub­lished a re­port that Trinidad was suf­fer­ing from the col­lapse of Venezuela’s econ­o­my as pi­rates were tar­get­ing lo­cal fish­er­men. Boodoo said fish­er­men be­ing tar­get­ed at sea was noth­ing new in Moru­ga.

Kidnappers

“The lat­est is that my broth­er is there and they (kid­nap­pers) want the mon­ey in a week’s time or else they (vic­tims) will be killed. Right now my moth­er is in a con­di­tion and I don’t know what is go­ing on. Right now we are just sit­ting down and pray­ing to God that some­thing will work out and my broth­er will come home safe­ly…They said that in a week’s time if they don’t get their mon­ey, they are start­ing to kill,” Boodoo said.

Joy, who spoke by phone yes­ter­day, de­clined to say much about the in­ci­dent. She said that peo­ple were spread­ing ru­mours about what had re­al­ly hap­pened. She said lo­cal rep­re­sen­ta­tives in Venezuela are as­sist­ing her fam­i­ly and al­though she was not able to speak to Singh, she was con­fi­dent that he was alive.

“All that peo­ple talk­ing, don’t study no­body. It is just ru­moured they are spread­ing, say­ing that they (kid­nap­pers) throw him here and there. Peo­ple just like to talk and that is why I don’t want to say any­thing as yet,” Joy said.