Neighbourhood kidnap repeat

By Scott MacLeod

HAMILTON - A young Taiwanese woman who was kidnapped from her Hamilton home is being offered solace by the victim of a previous abduction who lives just 500m away.

The shocked 21-year-old was recovering with friends yesterday after being tied up, gagged and plucked from her plush family home in River Rd by three robbers at 10 pm on Wednesday. She was held for six hours before being released.

The masked robbers tied up three other people in the house, left an elderly woman unbound and escaped with hundreds of dollars in cash and thousands of dollars in jewellery.

Detective Senior Sergeant Mike Whitehead said the woman was dumped in Meremere with slight injuries and flagged down a truck at 4 am. Others in the house were her 16-year-old sister, her mother, her 79-year-old grandmother and a male friend aged 23.

Few details on the family were available yesterday, but Government records show Chao Li-Hua Cheng bought the home in August for $630,000.

In a bizarre coincidence, the house is just 500m from the home of Jenny Gallagher, whose abduction featured in a TV3 documentary just one hour before Wednesday's raid.

Jenny Gallagher was married to a prominent businessman when she was held for ransom 12 years ago. Two armed men kept her for three days before she escaped into bush at Te Pahu, 20km west of Hamilton.

Yesterday, she called for family and friends to gather around the Taiwanese victim to help her recover.

She said the trauma would stay with the young woman for a long time. "I would say to her, 'I'm really sorry this has happened and I know how it feels'," she said. "I would help her in any way I can."

A neighbour, who refused to give her name, said she heard the family's alarm go off. She rushed to the window and saw sensor lights go on in the family's driveway and a car leave their garage.

Minutes later, the 17-year-old knocked on her door and said she had been burgled.

Her phone lines had been cut and she wanted to ring police.

"She said, 'My sister's lost, my sister's lost'," the woman said. "The grandmother then came over and was very cold and shocked."

Detective Senior Sergeant Whitehead said the family were probably raided because they looked wealthy.

Police were seeking two average-sized Maori men in dark clothes who hitch-hiked to Foreman Rd, Hamilton, from Meremere at the time the woman was released.

A red Toyota Celica car that was stolen from the home during the raid - but not taken to Meremere - was later found on Foreman Rd. Police dogs lost a scent.