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The haunt­ing screams of kid­nap vic­tim Tara Po­li­ah not on­ly il­lus­trat­ed the fear she faced when four men bun­dled her in­to a car, but the fear which gripped the Don Miguel Road, San Juan com­mu­ni­ty when he neigh­bours re­alised she had been grabbed by crim­i­nals.

Around 7.12 pm on Wednes­day, Po­li­ah, 73, was grabbed at her home by four Venezue­lans, one a for­mer ten­ant for the past four months. One of the men placed a gun to her head and an­oth­er tried to block her mouth as she was dragged, kick­ing and scream­ing, in­to a Nis­san Y12 AD wag­on.

But in a mul­ti-agency re­sponse, which in­clud­ed the Coast Guard and po­lice ser­vice, Pol­ish was res­cued at sea hours lat­er and 11 peo­ple con­nect­ed to the ab­duc­tion were sub­se­quent­ly held. This in­clud­ed two men who jumped over­board as law en­force­ment was clos­ing in on the ves­sel they had Po­li­ah in. They were lat­er res­cued by a fish­er­man who hand­ed them over to the Coast Guard, be­fore be­ing turned over to the po­lice.