A strange kidnapping in Buxton

Sep 06, 2009 Features / Columnists, Murder and Mystery

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By Michael Jordan

It was on December 17, 2002, that 19-year-old carpenter Heraman Sahadeo, popularly known as Sadesh, asked his mother, Radha, for money to make a phone call to his reputed wife. He left home, returned shortly after, and this time he made what his mother considered to be a disturbing request.
He informed his mother that he needed money to go into Buxton to collect his wages.
“You know that place is dangerous,” Radha Sahadeo told her son, the third of four children.
At the time, Buxton was teeming with a gang of gunmen who were on a spree of robbery, murder and kidnapping. Some of the abducted had turned up dead, even after ransom demands were made. Even seasoned police ranks avoided the village.
But on her son’s insistence, Mrs. Sahadeo eventually gave him $60 for the journey to and from Buxton.
At around 15:45 hrs Radha Sahadeo, a Special Constable, was preparing for work when the telephone rang.
When she picked it up, a man with a gruff voice informed her that “we got your son in custody.”
Mrs. Sahadeo asked the caller to identify the police station where her son was being detained.
The caller replied that Heraman was not at any police station.
“You want to know wheh he deh?” With that, the caller put Heraman Sahadeo on the line.
Mrs. Sahadeo had time to hear her sobbing son say “Mommy?” before the phone was taken from him and the caller came back on the line.
The man then informed Sahadeo that her son had been kidnapped. She was told that she would have to hand over $5M if she wanted him released.
Radha Sahadeo assumed that the call was a hoax. She had no wealth to speak of. In fact, she was a single parent who had struggled for years to raise her children.
Sahadeo responded by “cussing out” the caller before the phone went dead.
But just before 20:00 hrs, the same caller again contacted Mrs. Sahadeo. This time the caller warned the Special Constable that the kidnappers would kill her son if she failed to deliver the ransom. The caller said that he knew that Sahadeo wore a “fat chain,” and described her house and its location.
After the call ended, Sahadeo hurried to the Beterverwagting Police Station to report the kidnapping, though she still believed that she was the victim of a cruel hoax.
While she was out, the ‘kidnapper’ called again and this time a brother of the missing carpenter answered.
Again, the ‘kidnapper’ warned that the carpenter would be killed if the family failed to deliver the ransom. He also threatened that they would burn the family’s home and kill the occupants.
“When y’all kill he, call and tell we so we could bury he, but when y’all ready to come and kill, is two bad men gun reach up,” the relative retorted.
That was the last call they received.
By now, a frantic Radha Sahadeo had informed ranks at the Vigilance and the Cove and John police stations about the ‘kidnapping’.
The carpenter who had employed her son was detained but released shortly after.
He confirmed that the teen had worked with him and even showed investigators his tools. According to Mrs. Sahadeo, this man worked with another carpenter who lived in Buxton and it was to him that Sahadeo had gone to collect his wages.
But she claims that despite promising to scour Buxton for her missing son, her terrified colleagues never set foot into the community.
“I work with the police and yet they did not offer any sympathy or search for my son.”
Frustrated at their reluctance, Mrs. Sahadeo sought assistance from the then army Chief of Staff Michael Atherley and then Minister of Home Affairs Ronald Gajraj.
She received some financial assistance from the Home Affairs Ministry but there was no word about her son’s whereabouts.
Then in 2003, a strange event occurred.
According to Mrs. Sahadeo, a niece of hers was passing near Buxton when she saw the missing carpenter, Heraman Sahadeo, sitting on a bridge with two other men. The men reportedly pulled a toque over Sahadeo’s face as the niece was passing.
Since then, Mrs. Sahadeo said she received several reports from other relatives who claimed to have seen Sahadeo in Buxton.
She suggested that gunmen in the community were holding her son against his will while training him in the use of firearms.
But if this theory is correct, why hasn’t the lad tried to escape now that the guns of Buxton have been relatively silent?
“I’ve grieved for almost seven years for him,” she said this week. “He would be 25 years now.
“I believe that he’s still alive. I hope that some day he will return.”

If you have any information about this case, please contact us at our Lot 24 Saffon Street location.
You can also contact us by telephone on numbers 22-58465, 22-58491, and 22-58458, or contact Michael Jordan on his email address [email protected] .

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