Jacklin Tran focused on one thing as she watched the car carrying her kidnapped boyfriend Graham McMynn speed away from her: the license plate number.

"I was left crying and screaming," Tran testified Tuesday at the trial of five men charged in the abduction. "I was repeating the license number over and over again because I didn't want to forget."

McMynn was taken by two gun-toting men on April 4, 2006, as he and Tran were making the short drive to the University of British Columbia from the south Vancouver home of McMynn's wealthy parents, where they lived.

Tran, who spent less than two hours in the witness box, said a car blocked the path of McMynn's Volkswagen Golf and two young men emerged, one heading for each side of the car.

"I just remember yelling something was wrong," Tran told prosecutor Richard Cairns.

The man who came to her door brandished a gun and demanded she hand over her cell phone, Tran said.

"Initially I thought they were going to steal the car," she said.

Instead, they ordered McMynn to get into the back of their car and told Tran to stay behind. As the kidnappers drove away, she noted the car's plate number: 032 GDS.

A rented silver Honda Civic sedan with that plate number was recovered by police later that day.

Tran said she then noticed an older maroon-coloured car parked behind the Golf with a young male at the wheel.

"We made eye contact," she said, but then he drove away, leaving her alone.

"At that point I was just panicking," said Tran, who broke into tears as she described what happened next.

She managed to flag down a woman in an SUV who, at first, didn't want to let Tran into her vehicle but eventually called 911.

"She spoke to the police a little bit before handing the phone to me," said Tran.

That call triggered what would become a massive manhunt involving 400 police officers that led to McMynn's rescue eight days later from a suburban Surrey basement apartment. No ransom demand was ever made.

Jose Hernandez, Anh The Nguyen, Joshua Ponicappo, Sam Tuan Vu and Van Van Vu are being tried in B.C. Supreme Court on one count each of kidnapping and unlawful confinement. Justice Arne Silverman is hearing the case without a jury.

Tran said McMynn's two abductors were dark-skinned with short "buzz-cut" hair, who she thought may have been Latino or Mexican. She said she could not provide a detailed description of the kidnappers.

"My focus was on the gun," she said.

In his testimony, McMynn said the man who approached his side of the car was white.

"I did not identify anyone who was white-skinned," Tran told defence lawyer Dimitri Kontau, who represents Ponicappo.

The men didn't fit in with residents of the wealthy neighbourhood, most of them white or Chinese, she said.

Neither McMynn, who was blindfolded or kept in a locked room during his confinement, nor Tran were asked to identify any of the five accused.

That's not surprising, defence lawyer Lawrence Myers said outside court.

"I'm presuming that these witnesses have been interviewed on numerous occasions by both police and the Crown and they know the answer to that question and that is that there is no identification of any of the witnesses other than the general description that she gave of them being of a certain racial or ethnic origin," said Myers, who represents Van Van Vu.

Defence lawyers challenged Tran on details of the kidnapping, including her description of the getaway car.

In her first statement to police she also said the man who went to McMynn's side of the car was not holding anything but later said she could not see whether he was holding anything. McMynn said he had a gun.

"At that time, you know what, I was panicking," Tran said. "That's what I wrote out. I didn't write many details."

It was when police left her alone to write her statement that Tran said she recalled an incident the day before the abduction, when a vehicle followed them to the point McMynn drove through a stop sign to avoid it.

She initially told police she didn't remember any suspicious activity before the kidnapping.

"I was left in the room and I was crying and I was praying, and that's when I remembered," she said, adding McMynn recalled it too when they talked after his rescue.

The trial is expected to wrap up much faster than anticipated, after the Crown and defence agreed to trim the witness list. It could be over in seven weeks, rather than the four months originally scheduled.