The Tribune

AS dawn broke on Sunday a woman motorist was held up and sexually assaulted by men driving a stolen taxi van. About an hour earlier two of the four men had held up the taxi owner, threatened him with death, tied him up and drove off in his van.

Yesterday, a man was being held for questioning, while police looked for three other men. By about 4pm yesterday, the grey coloured Toyota Hiace taxi van 681 had been found parked in Monastery Park.

Lamorn “King” Rolle of Marigold Farm Road, off Joe Farrington Road east, had gone to his aunt’s birthday party on Saturday evening, getting home about 4.30am on Sunday.

”I am always very aware of my surroundings,” Mr Rolle told The Tribune yesterday. “I saw no cars in the area as I reversed into my driveway. I took the trash out of the van and put it in the garbage. I still didn’t see anyone in the area and so I went back to lock up the van when I saw a young man coming towards me. His nose and mouth were covered with a piece of cloth and he had a small black gun, which he pointed at me.”

Mr Rolle said he decided not to play the hero and so did as he was told. The gunman ordered him to lie face down on the ground and not to look at him. “As I lay face down, I saw a second person approaching,“ Mr Rolle recalled.

Mr Rolle, who has been in the taxi business about four years, only had $30 cash on him, two cell phones, his watch and keys to his car and home. The gunman took them all.

“When they searched and found not much on me, they ordered me to get up and open the house,” Mr Rolle said. “Again they ordered me to lie face down on the floor while they searched the house. As I lay face down, I heard the door open and so I knew a third person had entered.

“One of the men, who tied one of my shirts around my face as I lay face down, asked if I could breathe. He had already put a sock in my mouth, but wanted to make certain that my nose was free so that I could still breathe,” Mr Rolle said. It was then that he detected a Jamaican accent.

Mr Rolle had recently moved into the house and so it was not fully furnished. “Other than my TV and my mattress, there was not much in the house,” he said.

“They tied me up with the phone cord and the drop cord. They ran through the house searching for anything of value. They took my TV and my daughter’s iPad. They demanded that I find them money. They said that they knew I had money somewhere in the house, and if they didn’t find it they were going to kill me. They put a pillow on top of my head, hitting my head with a hammer which they found in my tool bag in the utility closet.

“I told them that I never kept money in my house, it was in the bank. They demanded the pin number of my ATM card. I gave it to them. They threatened that if it were not correct, they would come back to kill me. They then proceeded to clean out the utility closet so that they could fit me in it. They piled whatever they could find against the closet door to keep me in - the closet locks from the inside, so they had to block it from the outside to keep it closed,” he said. They then turned off the lights and left him in darkness. He soon heard his taxi van “speed off.”

Mr Rolle said the whole time this was going on one of them kept suggesting that they should kill him anyway. Mr Rolle valued the goods they had stolen to be worth about $2,500.

He said he fought for some time to free his hands. He then untied his legs and ran to his neighbour’s home for help. They drove him to the Elizabeth Estates police station. The police headquarters was called and an all-points bulletin was issued to locate his taxi van.

Although a few taxi drivers, not knowing Mr Rolle’s taxi van had been stolen, later told him that up to Sunday afternoon, they had seen his van being driven in the Marathon area.

Mr Rolle checked with his bank yesterday morning. He was told that there was no evidence that anyone had made an attempt to get into his account. He then closed it.

He said he learned from the police that his van was involved in the hold-up of a woman motorist at about 6am, a little over an hour after it had been stolen. He understood that she had been sexually assaulted by the men, who he described as being “very young.”

He also learned while at the police station that there was a security camera in the neighbourhood, which spotted a car drive up, drop one person off then circle around, stop again and drop of two more persons.

The police are still searching for the suspects.