Gunman kills dad in front wife, son

Five-year-old Vikash Chablal watched helplessly as a gunman stood over his father, Vishnu “Toy” Chablal, and fatally shot him in the head on Sunday. So innocent was the infant, he believed that when undertakers and police left with his father’s body they were going to bring him back to life. “The police carrying my daddy and they will make my daddy live again. They will bring him back,” Vikash told his grandmother, Indra Jagdeo, shortly after the murder. Vikash spent yesterday at his cousins' home while his mother Ria Jagdeo went to her husband’s autopsy. “The child and his mother saw everything. She (Ria) ran to my house saying: ‘Mummy, open the door, bandits shoot Toy and he is dead,’” the elder Jagdeo told the T&T Guardian yesterday.

Chablal, 39, a wrecker operator with 800-4TOW, was in front of his Caratal Road, Bonne Aventure, Gasparillo, home shortly after 6 pm, when a  gunman ran up the adjacent Lightbourne Road and shot him in the chest. After Chablal fell, the gunman, who was wearing a hat and a handkerchief over his face, approached and shot him in the head. The killing occurred just four days after bandits broke into Jagdeo’s home, which is in front of Chablal’s house. Giving the details of the ordeal, Jagdeo said: “My son-in-law went to work but he forgot his chart, which he uses to write down what he did for the night, so he came back for it. He went down the hill and he spent about a five minutes and he left the truck on. “The child wanted to see how the wrecker lights up, so he, his wife and the child came upstairs. 

“While he was going up the steps, a person ran out from the back of the toilet and fired three shots at him. He fired two, but it missed Toy and he shot him again. When he fell, the gunman came over him and fired the next shot on his head and so he died.” Jagdeo said Chablal had three children with his previous wife but had planned to marry Ria once his divorce was finalised. She said it was a mystery why anyone would want to kill Chablal as he was a nice person. Up to yesterday police had not established a motive for the killing. Lamenting the high murder rate, Jagdeo said: “This country really gone bad. I never know I would have seen that in my yard, in front of my house.”