By Marlyn Montilla
28 Feb 2024, 16:26 PM EST
Eastern Caribbean authorities are searching the region’s waters in hopes of finding a missing Virginia couple who were aboard their Simplicity catamaran a little over a week ago when it was kidnapped by three escaped prisoners from Grenada. the police reported.
Identified as Ralph Hendry, 71, and Kathy Brandel, 66, they were possibly thrown into the ocean and killed, Grenada officials said.
“The information suggests that while traveling between Grenada and St. Vincent, (the suspects) got rid of the occupants,” Don McKenzie, police commissioner of the Royal Grenada Police Force, explained in a press conference.
The search began on February 21 after someone found their abandoned catamaran off the coast of St. Vincent and called the authorities.
Officials said the three prisoners fled a police station on February 18 and hijacked the catamaran the next day. Officials said the fugitives illegally entered the southwest coast of St. Vincent on February 19 and docked the boat.
Later, two days later, the three subjects were arrested on the northwest coast of the island.
They never locked it
Friends of the missing couple said they felt safer in most of the Caribbean than in some places in the United States and questioned whether the four would have been able to stop the three prisoners who hijacked the catamaran.
Pete and Tammy Sisson expressed that they felt so comfortable during the trip with Ralph Hendry and Kathy Brandel that they never locked the door when they left the boat docked during the day, according to WAVY news.
Both couples sailed in early February before Henry and Brandel were possibly killed and thrown overboard.
“We would leave the boat for the day and leave the door open,” Pete Sisson noted. “We feel safer on many Caribbean islands than in parts of the United States, and they were the same way.”
The Sissons later flew home after spending 11 days traveling to Antigua, while Henry and Brandel remained in Granada.
“I’d like to think that if there were four people on that boat, this would never have happened,” Pete added.
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