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Bar owner kidnapped, tortured in W. Phila.

Clinton Horrit climbed out of a basement window in West Philly last night, covered in blood, looking every bit what he was: a man who had been brutally tortured for four hours over a huge ransom.

SWAT team positioned on Cedarhurst Street yesterday.
SWAT team positioned on Cedarhurst Street yesterday.Read moreJOSEPH KACZMAREK/Daily News

Clinton Horrit climbed out of a basement window in West Philly last night, covered in blood, looking every bit what he was: a man who had been brutally tortured for four hours over a huge ransom.

Horrit, the owner of a popular reggae bar, found himself in the middle of a harrowing, madcap kidnapping plot after a robbery in his bar went awry.

Five masked Jamaican men barged into Club William Penn at 57th and Ludlow streets at about 3 p.m., said Lt. John Walker of Southwest Detectives.

The would-be thieves intended to rob Horrit, who is also Jamaican, but shot him once in the leg when he confronted them at the front of the bar. Horrit, 45, was then shoved into a white Ford or Chevy van that was waiting outside his club, Walker said, and a nail-biting ransom plot quickly unfolded.

"By that point, they were too far into it," Walker said. "The captors used his cell phone to call his family and demanded $450,000."

At some point, the kidnappers took Horrit inside a beige stucco rowhouse on Cedarhurst Street near 60th, across from Turner Middle School.

They continued demanding the hefty ransom, and their threats to harm Horrit escalated as hours passed with no pay-off, Walker said.

"They bound him with duct tape," Walker said. "It appears they stabbed him twice in the chest inside the [Cedarhurst] residence."

Shortly before 7 p.m., the five kidnappers left the house - and their terrified victim - and fled in their white van, which witnesses said had tinted front windows and no rear or side windows.

"They weren't making any headway," Walker said of the kidnappers. "There was no way they were getting that kind of money, so they might have figured, 'Why continue?'"

With his captors gone, Horrit climbed out of a basement window and hobbled over to a neighbor's house.

Barbara Allison, 67, was about to lock her front door for the night when Horrit barged in.

"He said to call 911," said Allison, who runs an in-home day-care center. "He said he was kidnapped and held hostage.There was lots of blood."

Walker said Horrit was taken to the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania in critical but stable condition. Police cruisers and helicopters continued zipping across West Philly late in the evening, trying to track down the suspects or their vans.

Tipsters can contact police at 215-686-3183. *