TRINIDAD TEEN CAPTURED BUT VENEZUELANS RANSOM PAID WITH KFC

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.