Ross Sheil, Staff Reporter

While police were just over a week ago touting the training in the United States of two of its officers as hostage negotiators, one man in St. Ann resorted to more direct methods, crashing his car into kidnappers to rescue his 'baby mother' and nine-year-old daughter late Saturday night.

By Sunday morning, Errol Brown had freed the woman and his daughter and both kidnappers were dead following the crash near Fern Gully in St. Ann.

According to Claremont police, the kidnappers had earlier robbed a bar in Golden Grove of cash and goods before the gunpoint robbery and kidnap of Mr. Brown's child and her mother from their home in Dunnsville.

When The Gleaner chanced upon the scene shortly after midnight, the body of one of the kidnappers was curled up in a police lorry while onlookers stood and watched as the other kidnapper lay still breathing on the road.

Within minutes a car containing the clearly distressed mother and daughter had sped off escorted by police. Police stood over the kidnapper still on the road, eventually bundling him on top of his accomplice in the back of the lorrybefore driving them away.

Mr. Brown, bloodied and shaken, claimed neighbours had telephoned to alert him of the kidnapping and that he immediately left his home in nearby Constant Gardens in an attempt to head off the kidnappers.

Quick decision

He said that after spotting the older victim's car, which the kidnappers had also stolen, he took a decision to use his own vehicle, a Toyota Caldina station wagon, to ram the stolen Toyota Corolla station wagon off the road.

"I see it's her car and I follow it and trail it for about two miles through Colgate and come out to Swansea. Then they start pick up speed and I decide to ram the car into them and we do exactly so," he claimed matter-of-factly about the crash.

With both kidnappers attempting to escape, Mr. Brown claimed that, with assistance from passersby, he attacked the men. This was confirmed by witnesses The Gleaner spoke with on the scene. Contrary to other accounts, the Ocho Rios CIB reported that a licensed firearm holder had shot the men, who were both pronounced dead on arrival at hospital.