Woman who helped Robert Allenby to safety: 'I realized this wasn't well'
As more details surface regarding Robert Allenby's abduction, assault and robbery during the Sony Open, reports have begun to vary. A new voice entered the picture Monday, that of bystander Charade Keane, who helped Allenby to safety that night. Keane presented a slightly different version of the abduction.
In an interview aired Sunday during Sony Open coverage, Allenby, battered and visibly bruised around his face, told NBC's Steve Sands that he remembered little of what happened Friday night. He told police that he was abducted upon leaving a bar, beaten, robbed and abandoned early Saturday morning in a park some six miles from his hotel near Waialae Country Club.
"You see this in movies," Allenby, 43, told NBC Sports. "I've watched 'Taken' and 'Taken 2' a few times. It's kind of like a spitting image, but I'm just very thankful that I'm alive."
A story published Monday on the Honolulu Star-Advertiser website introduced Keane, 42, who said she was riding her bike at about 1:30 a.m. Saturday when she saw a bloody-faced Allenby sitting on a planter at the Diamond Head-makai corner of Kapiolani Boulevard and Pii-koi Street.
Allenby had said that Keane saw him being thrown from the trunk of a car, but Keane didn't remember it that way, according to the report.
In the hours after Allenby's abduction, he described a scenario in which he awoke in a gutter near a park, where he said several homeless men were kicking him and trying to go through his pockets. He also remembered being chased down the street with Keane.
According to Keane, however, Allenby was talking with the two homeless men, whom she knows, and she thought the men were helping him. The two men mentioned to her that Allenby had hit his head on a rock.
"They started arguing when I got up there, and I realized this wasn't well. I need to get him out of here," she said, and confirmed Allenby's story that the men were trying to rob him. "I just wanted him to get away because I wasn't sure of the situation. They started arguing again."
Keane told Allenby to come with her, and when he did, the two men followed. Eventually, Allenby asked Keane for help negotiating a deal with the men to leave him alone. According to Keane, Allenby suggested he would give them $500 in exchange for his wallet and phone because he thought the men had robbed him.
"The men told her they didn't have his phone but to tell Allenby that they did have it and would give it back if he gave them the money," Keane said. She returned to Allenby with the news, and told him that they needed to leave.
"They were following us, and that felt spooky," she said.
Eventually, an unidentified military EMT came upon the pair and put Allenby in a cab. The EMT paid for him to return to his hotel.
Allenby, who missed the cut at the Sony, had gone to dinner Friday night at the Amuse Wine Bar, located in the Honolulu Design Center, with his caddie Mick Middlemo and a friend from Australia. Middlemo returned to his hotel and Allenby became separated from his other friend when Allenby left to go to the bathroom. That's when the trouble began.
During the ordeal, Allenby incurred facial cuts and bruises -- visible in a selfie he took for his Facebook page that later surfaced on Golf Channel -- and was robbed of an undisclosed amount of money. He is entered in this week's Humana Challenge in La Quinta, Calif., and said he would evaluate his ability to play after arriving on the mainland.
The FBI has said it will not investigate the incident.
"There is no federal nexus to the allegations that are claimed (by Allenby)," said special agent Tom Simon of the Honolulu FBI field office.
A message left by Golfweek with Honolulu police was not immediately returned.
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