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Men snatch boys - Cops hunt downtown ring


By DAVID DUNKLEY, Staff Reporter
THE POLICE HAVE launched a manhunt for a group of men who have been abducting and abusing schoolboys in Downtown, Kingston.
The men, the police say, accost these boys, who are mostly under 16 years, and after engaging them in conversation, take them away at knife-point to an area where they are assaulted and then released.
A senior officer at the Centre for the Investigations of Sexual Offences and Child Abuse, told THE STAR the police are also advising people to be careful when travelling in Downtown, Kingston, especially near the waterfront and the Mall.
"We are appealing to people, especially young boys, to be wary of men who appraoch them in Downtown," the officer implored. "We are also asking others in and around communities to be on the lookout for men with young boys, sometimes with their faces covered."
Just last week a 15-year-old student of a prominent high school in Kingston, was abducted.
Pulled knife
In a report to the police, the boy stated that he was always being called to by a man at the Kingston Mall and one day decided to stop and talk with him. The teen told the cops that the man pulled a knife and ordered him into a waiting motorcar where they placed a bag over his head.
Police say he was taken somewhere where he was ordered to take off his clothes and then assaulted. He was released on Hope Road, St. Andrew by the men and walked to the Half-Way Tree Police Station where he reported the matter.
The officer said that even though this was the only report the centre has received, they have information that others have occurred.
"The youngster said while he was at the place he refused to take off his clothes and one of the men threatened to cut him up but another told him not to as out of all the others he was the one who co-operated the most," the officer said.
"He also told us that when the men took him out of the car, his head was still covered and he heard a lady say to the men, 'what unoo going on with' and they told her, he was their friend and they were just taking him to a house as a surprise."