Sosua Kidnapping?

Ken

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There is a rumor circulating around Sosua that a foreign resident was stopped while driving the Moca road, put in a car and taken toward Haiti. Rumor further is that the Dominican authorities learned of this in some way and were waiting at the border to make the rescue.

If true, one more thing to add to the list of reasons why it isn't a good idea to drive a car in the DR.
 

Robert

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That's like saying, I'm not going to use a cell phone as it might get stolen.

I have driven that road 30x, it's a great road and have no plans to change.
 

Ken

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Chris said:
Uuuhm? Is this a specific foreign resident? Perhaps someone that consistently 'disses' the locals? Or random?

Yes and no. Probably wrong place at wrong time. Rumor is there was a road block. Maybe cars allowed to pass until one that looked promising came along.

I've seen your car, Robert. You have nothing to worry about.
 
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Robert

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Ken said:
Yes and no. Probably wrong place at wrong time. Rumor is there was a road block. Maybe cars allowed to pass until one that looked promising came along.

I've seen your car, Robert. You have nothing to worry about.

So did they go after the person or the car?
Based on your last response, the car :)
 

Rocky

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Sabaneta - Moca road

I was on that road this morning, on my way to Moca, then to Santiago.
I have to agree with Robert's assessment.
If the kidnappers were out to get one particular dude, and were well set up, and the victim didn't have a contingency plan, it wouldn't be hard to do.
If someone in this world is really out to get you, unless your the president of a country surrounded with secret service agents, the odds are they will get you, be it on the road, or anywhere else.
It certainly would have no effect on me and my perception of driving in the DR or anywhere else.
When I had my fruit & veggie business and traveled in the middle of the night with lots of cash, I was aware that crooks might try to block my way on the road, to rob me, as it was a pretty popular scam near El Tunel on the POP - Santiago highway.
The first time they tried it on me, was on the Caretera Turistica, and I put my plan into action.
They used 5 or 6 cars and a few bikes.
Suffice to say I put my plan into action and they ran for the hills, with brown streaks in their shorts.
Being prepared makes all the difference.
Now, what I and I'm sure everybody else wants to know, do you know who the victim was?
Do we have any more details?
 

AZB

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it maybe just a rumor but....


Then again we do have people who love to flash money unnessarily in public. I know of one foreigner who loves to disrespect anyone and everyone and flashes thousands of pesos roll even when he has to pay a bill of 20 pesos. I can see this type of person attracting attention of the wrong element of this society.
AZB
 

Rocky

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AZB said:
it maybe just a rumor.
AZB
Ken stated that from the start, and I suppose we will soon know.
Nevertheless, it's a good idea to give some thought to what you would do, should the situation ever arise.
Being prepared in life, makes all the difference.
I'm sure we've all had close calls in our lives.
Better to be a sleeping lion, than a lamb, ready for slaughter.
 

jcarn

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Rocky said:
Suffice to say I put my plan into action and they ran for the hills, with brown streaks in their shorts.
Being prepared makes all the difference.

this makes me curious.... so what was the plan that you put into action? :ninja:
 

billyidol

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the contingency plan was a; burger and chips from his restaurant...apparently the dominican jumped out of the car at 100km per hour.....ooouch!!!!!!!! (just jokin!!!!!!!!)





jcarn said:
this makes me curious.... so what was the plan that you put into action? :ninja:
 

Rocky

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jcarn said:
this makes me curious.... so what was the plan that you put into action? :ninja:
I slammed on the brakes and stopped way before they might have expexted me to.
I immediately reversed back around the right hand bend with my lights off.
I positioned the truck in such a fashion that they could no longer see it, but by stretching my head out of the window, I could still see them.
The I fired a 12 gauge phosporus ball just above their heads, from a "vengala".
You know, the pistols they use for boating emergencies.
Then I waited a few seconds, and I fired another, bouncing along the pavement towards them.
You never seen guys start up their vehicles so fast and get the heck out of there.
I then cautiously moved forward around the bend, still with no lights on, assuring that they had all left, then took off in the same direction as them, hoping to catch up to one of them and give him a litlle "over the cliff adventure", but I never did catch up to any of them.
I thought I was driving pretty fast, and they had no more than a 2 minute lead on me, but I never saw them again.
 

Rocky

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billyidol said:
the contingency plan was a; burger and chips from his restaurant...apparently the dominican jumped out of the car at 100km per hour.....ooouch!!!!!!!! (just jokin!!!!!!!!)
The ribs might have been more tempting...
 

Ken

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Rocky said:
Now, what I and I'm sure everybody else wants to know, do you know who the victim was?
Do we have any more details?

Rocky, when the person was asked yesterday if everything she had been hearing was true, the response was "yes, but right now I am too busy to talk." Or words to that effect.

I first heard about it Monday morning but didn't post anything until I at least had that much confirmation.

I don't have more details and I am not going to give names. But I did think at least those of us who live here should be aware that things like this are going on for the very same reasons that you mentioned in your post, i.e., to cause people to think in advance what you will do if, for example, people try to stop you on the road somewhere.
 
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chinola

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Please let me enlighten you about this "kidnapping".

The victim is a german resident, living and working here for many years and certainly not the kind of guy flashing thousands of dollars around.
He was on his way to Santiago on the Carretera Turistica on a saturday at noon with his pasola and got hit by a jeep. Four guys jumped out of the jeep telling him there are police and he would need to come to the station with them to search for weapons and drugs and pushed him into the jeep.

Instead of taking him to the station in Yasica they took him to a sugarcane field, tied him up and beat him up badly, taking all his belongings including credit cards and threatened to come back if the pin numbers wouldn't work.

He managed to free himself and get to a haitian batey where they helped him out and he could call his wife.

This is what really happened and it is first hand information as this guy is a good friend of mine.
 

rellosk

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Chinola, thanks for the report. I was hoping that Ken's posting was indeed a rumor.

Let us know if they catch the perpetrators.
 

AZB

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Wait a minute, he was on a pasola (scooter) on the mountian road to santiago? This is insane. This road is dangerous enough for big cars let alone a small pasola? You have cars coming at high speeds around the bends and curves, deviating over to the wrong side and this guy was riding a pasola? He may not have realized this but he was playing with his life in the first place.
He is lucky that he didn't get killed by the accident with the jeep.
AZB
 

Ken

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Now I am curious, since that is not the person that I have been talking about and not the person who was spoken to yesterday to see if the rumors were true.

Obviously something bad happened. But now the question is were there 2 incidents or are my sources of information completely off the track?

Since the person in my report seems to have confirmed his involvement, and since he is not a German who was riding to Santiago on a Pasola, it sounds like there were 2 incidents.

PS: If they got a guy on a pasola, you may not be safe after all, Robert.
 

Rocky

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mrgood100 said:
The DR obviously has a lot of good qualities. The weather, I guess, is good all year round and the water is wonderful. But I get the feeling that developers put the spin on life in the DR so they can sell to unsuspecting people who want a place in an exotic location. There appears to be an unrelenting culture of poverty and corruption. I guess it was existent on the same scale in the US some time ago but the DR seems to be a prototype of an unworkable society. I think that the most I would do is to rent a place for a little while. And I realize that the people are great and there are many moments which wouldn't happen in the States but I doubt this tilts the scale to make the experience wonderful. God love the expats who stay. If the economic situation gets much worse then there will be even more crimes against expats and then you will see an exodus. There is only so much that anyone can take before they see that there is a lost cause. Again, admittedly I would be an expat that would spend his time in a bar like a broke-beach-washout bitching about life there under any circumstances but I think that most expats would leave if it got that bad (unless they are stuck there.)
Maybe if you researched the archives a bit, you would know that nothing is different now than it was a long time ago, except communications.
We now hear about everything & anything.
Crima has always existed, still exists and will continue to exist.
That being said, it is generally perceived to be a safer place to live than most places in North America.
Amen.
 

Conchman

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yes there will always be poverty and corruption (at least for the next two generations anyhow) but it will never get so bad that foreigners will leave in an 'exodus.' Many ex-pats are actually here for this reason, that they can do things here (due to corruption) that they could not do on their home country.