Kevon Felmine

De­spite know­ing that he could be shot dead, Kr­ish­na Ma­haraj sac­ri­ficed his life for his fam­i­ly when he coaxed a gun­man in­to leav­ing their home to­geth­er so his wife could have a chance to es­cape.

There was no hap­py end­ing to Ma­haraj's hero­ics as he was shot in the head and lat­er died on the sur­geon's ta­ble at the San Fer­nan­do Gen­er­al Hos­pi­tal.

Ac­cord­ing to re­ports, Ma­haraj, 37, a Cepep con­trac­tor, his wife Sab­ri­na Khan, 28, and their nine-year-old son were at their Re­form Vil­lage home around 8.30 pm Mon­day, when two men, one armed with a gun, stormed in­to the fam­i­ly's home.

The fam­i­ly's work­man, Alle­scott Gaskill, who was in the apart­ment watch­ing tele­vi­sion with Ma­haraj and Khan, told the Guardian yes­ter­day that the men im­me­di­ate­ly be­gan shout­ing, "Where the mon­ey is? Where the gold is?"

Gaskill said the gun­men turned to him and told him to look away, and then bound and gagged him with cloth and an elec­tri­cal cord. They then be­gan slap­ping Ma­haraj and Khan, and de­mand­ed mon­ey be­fore ran­sack­ing the apart­ment.

He said they un­tied Khan, who went in­to a room and sur­ren­dered pieces of jew­el­ry and a bag of coins. Still not sat­is­fied, they be­gan de­mand­ing more cash. That was when Ma­haraj told the ban­dits that there was cash at Khan's busi­ness in Gas­par­il­lo.

"He said he had cash by the spa and he asked them if he gave them the mon­ey, if they would go away. They said yes, so he and the gun­man left while the oth­er one stayed. The oth­er one had a knife that he took from the kitchen," Gaskill said.

No one knew what hap­pened at the spa, but Gaskill said that with the cou­ple's son and his moth­er-in-law, Zo­ri­na, asleep in the next apart­ment, Ma­haraj did not want them to wake up. When the gun­man re­turned, he said, the ban­dit and his ac­com­plice had a pri­vate con­ver­sa­tion and left.

At that point, Gaskill told Khan to un­tie him and he ran to the neigh­bour's house to call the po­lice. How­ev­er, they found Ma­haraj bleed­ing in the front seat of his Nis­san Blue­bird. He was tak­en to hos­pi­tal by the po­lice.

It was the sec­ond time the fam­i­ly was robbed as Zo­ri­na said that in 2015, ban­dits in­vad­ed their home and got away with cash and jew­el­ry. She be­lieves the ban­dits were tar­get­ing the fam­i­ly, and ear­li­er around 7 pm she heard the neigh­bour's dog bark­ing at some­thing in the bush at the back of the house.

"They knew what they were com­ing here for so this is so ter­ri­fy­ing. They were re­al beat­ing my daugh­ter so he did that to save her. He was that kind of per­son to do what­ev­er he could to as­sist. I had no prob­lem with him," Zo­ri­na said.