By RHONDOR DOWLAT Saturday, October 4 2008

MURDERED private hire (PH) driver Ramphal “Paul” Kandan’s last words to his wife on Sunday night, was that he would be coming home as soon as he dropped off two women and a man, who had hired him.

On Thursday night, residents of Rajkumar Trace in Freeport stumbled upon his body along a dirt track. He had been stabbed several times. His Nissan B13 motor car is yet to be found. According to police sources, Kandan is the 14th taxi driver to have been murdered this year, while plying their cars for hire.

Through her tears, Kandan’s wife Pulmatie Boodoo at the house of mourning in Temple Street, Bank Village, Carapichaima, yesterday related the last conversation with her husband.

She said Kandan returned home from plying his car for hire at about 6.30 pm but decided to go back out for an hour. When she called his cellphone at 8.45 pm, Kandan told her had just gotten a job to drop two women and a man in Edinburgh 500, Chaguanas.

“He told me, ‘I’ll be home soon’, after he dropped the three off and that at the moment, he was waiting for them. I told him he should not have done that and to not take the job and come home,” Boodoo said.

“Hours passed and I did not see him so I called his phone at about 10.15 pm, and he kind of brushed me off, saying he was coming home now and when he does, he would explain everything to me. I never heard from him again. Calls to his cellphone after that, went straight to voice mail,” Boodoo said.

She and other relatives went to the Freeport Police Station and reported him missing. Police confirmed that they got a report from Boodoo that Kandan usually plied his car for hire along the St Mary’s Junction — Waterloo taxi route and left home wearing a green plaid shirt, a pair of blue jeans and a pair of brown leather slippers.

According to police, at about 4.30 pm on Thursday, residents of Rajkumar Trace got a foul stench and on searching, found the badly decomposed body of a man lying under a tree several feet off the road along a dirt track.

The body, which was bare back and clad in a pair of blue jeans and a pair of brown leather slippers was positively identified by two of his relatives who went to the Forensic Science Centre in St James with investigating officers.

Unable to contain her emotions, Boodoo called on Government to implement a plan of increased police patrols throughout the country to safeguard taxi drivers and the travelling public. “I find too much of these going on and whoever doing it getting away with it. There needs to be a lot more security and something needs to be put in place to monitor taxi drivers and even their passengers. The crime situation bad, bad, bad,” she said.

Villager Elroy Nero of Rajkumar Trace in Freeport expressed his disgust over the murder. “I now come home from work and I hear this thing and I all in shock. Right now my pores raising. This thing is frightening and disgusting. They only fixed the road about three months now and criminals using it to do their nonsense.” Up to late yesterday no arrests were made and investigations are continuing.