IT was a clumsy, random event, but an upper St Andrew man says he is thankful to have escaped with his life following a carjacking just over a week ago.

“I was scared, and at one point, when the guy held the gun to my head, I was just waiting for the shot. I seriously thought they were going to kill me,” said the lower Stony Hill resident, who, still shaken from the ordeal, requested that the Sunday Observer not disclose his identity.

It happened in a flash, said the man, whose story was authenticated by the police.

The carjacking victim was ending a visit to a friend’s home in Orange Grove, St Andrew and walking towards his car when a station wagon pulled up and parked on the street.

As he got into his car, one man approached him, held a gun to his head and told him to get into the passenger seat.

“He had a gun, so even though he had to drive and hold the gun, I decided not to try anything that would get me killed,” said the victim, who works in the construction industry, is about 5 feet 7 inches and of medium build.

He even remembers exactly what the gun looked like.

“It was a .38 long nosed black revolver.”

He was particularly apprehensive about his own behaviour, he says, given the fate of a friend in a similar situation a few months ago.

“My friend’s house was just doors away from where Jamie Lue lived, and all I could think about was what they did to him, and what I had to do or say to keep them from doing that to me.”

Jamie Lue, an investment analyst and contemporary of the victim, was carjacked in his Honda CRV, robbed and murdered late last year by a group of gunmen, who were later arrested and charged.

In the seconds during which the victim contemplated how he should react, two of the gunman’s accomplices jumped into the back seat of his car.

“They started driving all over with me, through Stony Hill, all over, and they seemed to know where they were going,” he recalled.

These were opportunistic criminals, he realised, when it came out later that the reason they abandoned the other vehicle and snatched his was because it was low on gas.

These were also reckless criminals, he also noted, when the three men stopped at a bar and robbed it, despite the fact that they had previously relieved the victim of his wallet with $5,000 cash inside.

“They were just on a robbing spree, and they didn’t care,” said the victim. “They just wanted my car for transport, but they were really after money.”

By this time, the friend whose house he just left figured something was wrong, and kept calling his cellphone.

Then the carjackers realised that between the two friends they could get a lump sum of money, and that further, they could ransom his friends and family for his safe return.

“Between my friend and I we could only get together $30,000, but I told them that if I could call my employer, he would be able to get $50,000,” he said.

For half an hour, he says, the three men, who had pulled off the road into a ditch, debated how to exchange the man for the money and make their escape without the police getting involved.

“They began negotiating with my boss, and they told him that when he came to drop off the money if they saw police, Hawkeye, KingAlarm or anything like that they would kill me on the spot,” he recalled.

The ransom payment was also very clumsy, but in the end, the men got the money, disappeared with the car and the cash, and the victim was picked up off the street by his boss, nearly three hours after he was first snatched.

His kidnappers’ crime spree ended later that night when the police engaged them in a shoot-out in the hills of St Ann.

By the following Sunday morning, two days after the incident, one of the three was under police guard in hospital, one was arrested and charged, but the third is still on the loose.

The car was recovered, badly damaged but with most of the valuables inside intact.

In the meantime, the victim says he’s had enough.

“This has been the fourth car that’s been stolen from members of my family. I think almost every one of my friends has had a car stolen from them, and this is just ridiculous.”

This latest incident, he says, was the last straw for him.

“I’m planning to leave. I can’t live like this – paranoid, always wondering if I’m going to be robbed or killed – and its just not safe anywhere any more,” he said.

“I was in front of a friend’s house when this happened. I don’t really like the foreign thing, but I have to weigh costs and benefits. I’d much rather … give up some of the great things about living in Jamaica, just so that I don’t have to worry about being carjacked, kidnapped or robbed at random.”

campbello@jamaicaobserver.com