The American man and woman on board appear to have been murdered… Yacht discovery in St. Vincent
A movie-like incident occurred in Grenada, in the Caribbean, where three inmates who escaped from prison hijacked a yacht with two Americans aboard, and local police were tracking them.
The Royal Grenada Police in St. Georges, the capital of Grenada in the Caribbean, announced on the 23rd that three prison escapees had kidnapped two Americans on an American yacht and issued a wanted order for them.
The police said that after combining the clues discovered so far, it is presumed that the two people on the yacht were murdered. “We are starting this investigation again from the beginning,” the police said.
According to the Salty Dawg Yachting Association, a private non-profit organization, the yacht’s owners are American nationals Raf Hendry and Cathy Brandel. The association said the two were long-time members of the association, close friends, and “veteran yachtsmen.”
The association said the port manager where the yacht was anchored contacted them to say that a member’s yacht, the Simplicity, had been hijacked and abandoned on a beach on St. Vincent Island.
The association revealed that the informant said that when he boarded the yacht and inspected it, the owners had disappeared and there were gruesome signs of violence inside the boat.
The yacht owners arrived last year after attending a Caribbean sailing event in Hampton, Virginia, and were heading to Antigua, Guatemala, to spend the winter in the eastern Caribbean, the association said.
“I have spent my entire life sailing in the Caribbean and I have never heard of or seen an incident like this,” said Bob Osborne, president of the association.
On the 24th, the families of the missing people visited the investigative authorities in St. Vincent and boarded the yacht that had been kidnapped by the criminals along with investigative investigators to look inside.
In order to reduce the risk to the search party, they issued a statement requesting that further searches for missing persons at sea be ended and that they would wait for the results of the investigation from the investigative authorities.
The three suspects who escaped from prison on February 18, aged 19, 25, and 30, had been imprisoned two months earlier on charges of robbery and assault. The oldest escapee, aged 30, was also being held on charges of one count of rape, three counts of attempted rape and two counts of assault causing bodily harm, Grenata police said.
Police estimate that they hijacked a yacht in St. Georges, the capital of Grenada, and then went to St. Vincent Island.
[산후안( 푸에르토 리코)=AP/뉴시스]
Source: Donga
Mark Jones is a world traveler and journalist for News Rebeat. With a curious mind and a love of adventure, Mark brings a unique perspective to the latest global events and provides in-depth and thought-provoking coverage of the world at large.