A 53-year-old man was shot dead dur­ing a botched rob­bery at his Co­corite apart­ment ear­ly yes­ter­day morn­ing.Res­i­dents of Up­per Co­corite Ter­race, Wa­ter­hole, Co­corite, told po­lice that around 12.30 am, they were awak­ened by the screams of their 53-year-old neigh­bour Justin Thomas.Con­cerned res­i­dents im­me­di­ate­ly con­tact­ed po­lice. How­ev­er, while wait­ing for the po­lice to ar­rive, they heard sev­er­al gun­shots.

West­ern Di­vi­sion Po­lice ar­rived soon af­ter and found Thomas ly­ing in his liv­ing room. He had gun­shot wounds to the back of his head and to his back. He was pro­nounced dead on the scene by a Dis­trict Med­ical Of­fi­cer (DMO).

In­ves­ti­ga­tors be­lieve Thomas' at­tack­ers broke in­to his apart­ment and were rob­bing him when he raised the alarm. His ac­tions might have an­gered his at­tack­ers lead­ing them to shoot him be­fore they ran away, po­lice said. His apart­ment was found ran­sacked and rel­a­tives told in­ves­ti­ga­tors some of his be­long­ings were miss­ing. Thomas was not known to po­lice and did not have a crim­i­nal record. The mur­der toll stood at 97 up to late yes­ter­day.