For the second time in 2024, a 77-year-old retired air conditioning technician has survived a terrifying kidnapping and armed robbery that left him penned in a dark locked washroom for 10 hours and drained his bank accounts of more than $142,000. Tarran Gallai, who shared his harrowing experience with local outlet the Express, says he is convinced the same gang that abducted him earlier this year targeted him again, pointing to clear similarities in the attackers’ methods and a chilling remark one captor made during this latest ordeal.
The incident unfolded on a Sunday morning, when Gallai left his shared home in San Francique to pick up post-operative eye medication from a neighborhood pharmacy in Debe. It was around 9:30 a.m. when he pulled up in his recently purchased Toyota Yaris, and just as he prepared to step out of the vehicle, two armed men seized him from behind and forced him into their own car at gunpoint.
“I was scared but I tried to keep a clear head,” Gallai recalled of the moment. The attackers told him outright that they intended to kill him if he did not comply with their demands. They drove him to an unoccupied house on Dumfries Road near La Romaine, where they bound his hands and feet tightly to a toilet bowl. Unlike many kidnapping cases where victims are blindfolded, the men left Gallai’s eyes uncovered — a choice that only amplified the horror of his 10-hour confinement in the completely dark, windowless room. He was given no food or water during his entire captivity, and with no chair to sit on, he was forced to remain in an uncomfortable, strained position the entire time.
One of the two kidnappers left the property with Gallai’s car, while the other stayed behind to guard him, checking on his bound prisoner every 30 minutes to prevent any escape attempt. Too restricted to break free, Gallai made the choice to speak gently to his abductor to avoid provoking violence, a decision he says kept him alive through the ordeal. “I was trapped. It was worse than being in jail… I started praying,” he described of the hours that stretched on, before he was finally moved on Monday morning.
The captors drove Gallai to a bank branch in Marabella, and ordered him to withdraw the full $130,000 they demanded, threatening harm if he alerted any bank staff or police. Too terrified to refuse, Gallai followed their instructions, passed the full sum in a bag to the waiting kidnappers at a prearranged spot on Market Street, where they stashed the cash in the trunk of his car before driving off and leaving him unharmed. By 12:30 p.m. that same day, Gallai had made it safely back to his relatives’ home.
In the aftermath, police located Gallai’s Toyota Yaris burned to a shell in Claxton Bay. But the financial damage did not end with the $130,000 bank withdrawal: the attackers kept his bank card, and made multiple additional transactions throughout Sunday, including a $5,000 ATM withdrawal and a series of point-of-sale purchases at supermarkets across Cunupia, Charlieville, and Freeport. In total, the attackers stole $142,486.80 from Gallai’s accounts.
This latest attack comes eight months after Gallai’s first kidnapping in February, which took place in Couva before his scheduled eye operation. Gallai says multiple clues point to the same group being behind both crimes: not only do the methods of the attackers match almost exactly, but one of the captors told him during Sunday’s abduction, “I got you this time again.” Despite the close parallels between the two incidents, the February kidnapping remains unsolved, with no arrests made to date.
Reflecting on the root of the crime, Gallai expressed his frustration that able-bodied people would choose to target and rob vulnerable citizens rather than seek work to support themselves. “People are trying to live as parasites. People don’t want to work and that causes this (kidnappings). They could do things to help themselves,” he told reporters.
In spite of the deep trauma the incident has left him with — he says the experience has left him permanently shaken — Gallai holds out hope that investigators will crack the case this time, unlike the February abduction. He has also issued a warning to other elderly residents, urging all senior citizens to never go out alone, to avoid falling victim to similar targeted attacks. In a surprising show of forgiveness, he added of his attackers, “I wish them luck for their lives.”
Acting Sergeant Narine is leading the ongoing investigation into the kidnapping and robbery, with no updates on arrests or recovery of the stolen funds as of the latest reports.