Tourist couple Ralph Hendry & Kathy Brandel feared dead after 3 escaped prisoners hijack their yacht in the Caribbean

A TOURIST couple is feared dead after three escaped prisoners hijacked their yacht in the Caribbean.

Sailors Ralph Hendry and his wife Kathy Brandel were last spotted on Sunday afternoon by a boating neighbour as they were on their way to a restaurant on Grenada.

The American couple had lived on their docked yacht, SV Simplicity, for a decade and were always in touch with their children back home.

They would usually stay over during winter and had arrived on the island two weeks prior.

Ralph and Kathy, from Virginia, were planning to stay for another week before vanishing.

They have followed the same path for the last few years, sailing from Virginia to Massachusetts before coming down to Florida to visit Ralph's sister and then heading down to the Caribbean to island hop.

Suellen Desmarais, Ralph's sister, : “On Sunday, they went into the town around 3 o’clock because another boater saw them go into town.

"The other boater, when he went to bed, he noticed that they were there because you always look to see who is around you and in the morning, when the boater woke up, they were gone.”

The sailors went missing the same day that three fugitives, Ron Mitchell, 30, Trevon Robertson, 19, and Abita Stanislaus, 25, “escaped lawful custody”, the reported.

The Grenadian trio escaped the South St. George Police Station and headed to the marina, where they reportedly fled to another Caribbean island - Saint Vincent and the Grenadines.

A police statement read: “Preliminary information emanating from investigators in St Vincent suggests that the three men made their way to St Vincent via a yacht which was docked in the St. George area."

On Wednesday, a sailing captain was paddle-boarding along the Saint Vincent shore when he noticed a ransacked yacht with a broken sail.

He immediately reported the SV Simplicity as “an unoccupied sailing vessel,” with “visible blood stains” on deck to the Coast Guard Service.

“The entire interior of the vessel and its decks were ransacked,” the commanding officer wrote, naming the missing couple.