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Thursday, July 24, 2025

Family considers closing restaurant

by

20160117

In less than 12 months an­oth­er Chi­nese busi­ness­man has been killed out­side his busi­ness­place in what po­lice and CCTV footage show was clear­ly an as­sas­si­na­tion.

Ac­cord­ing to the po­lice, around 11 pm Sat­ur­day Chong Cao, of Tumpuna Road, La Hor­quet­ta, was walk­ing out of his restau­rant Zhong Guo Cheng Chi­nese Restau­rant and Bar, lo­cat­ed at the same ad­dress, when a gun­man ap­proached him and shot him.

Cao, 30 was shot three times in the face and col­lapsed. He was tak­en to the Ari­ma Health Fa­cil­i­ty but was pro­nounced dead on ar­rival.

The CCTV footage showed a man of African de­scent in a blue long sleeved jer­sey and three quar­ter pants ap­proach­ing the vic­tim's wag­on just as it pulls in­to the com­pound. Cao is not seen in the video. The gun­man, who was on his phone dur­ing his at­tack, races in as a woman closed the gate to the dri­ve­way.

The killer goes to the dri­ver's side of the ve­hi­cle be­fore go­ing to the pas­sen­ger side. The gun­man is seen with his hand raised for a few sec­onds be­fore he runs away, still on the cell­phone.

Po­lice be­lieve the gun­man kept on the phone as an as­sur­ance to who­ev­er or­dered the hit that Cao was ei­ther dead or shot. Short­ly af­ter the gun­man leaves, a woman hold­ing a ba­by, be­lieved to be Cao's new born, is seen act­ing in a fran­tic man­ner as the woman who was clos­ing the gate at­tempts to con­sole her.

Po­lice al­so re­port­ed that pri­or to the shoot­ing Cao had been fol­lowed by a gun­man at the es­tab­lish­ment. He was in­formed and re­turned in­side the busi­ness af­ter col­lect­ing the days sales and se­cur­ing it.In­ves­ti­ga­tors said de­spite be­ing warned not to leave the com­pound he left and was at­tacked a short dis­tance away.

One po­lice of­fi­cer said Cao nev­er lis­ten to their ad­vice about his move­ment.Po­lice de­scribed Cao as cool, re­spect­ful and a man who goes about his busi­ness with­out any fear, as he had a good re­la­tion­ship with all.When T&T Guardian vis­it­ed the Cao's fam­i­ly yes­ter­day rel­a­tives were trau­ma­tised by the killing of the young busi­ness­man.

His 60-year-old moth­er, his sis­ter Qiv Ling Cao, broth­er-in-law Zhen­ua Dong and wife Ping Zhang were all in tears say­ing why he had to die so young. The cou­ple had one child.

Ping Zhang, with tears flow­ing, said her hus­band worked very hard to ac­com­plish his suc­cess in busi­ness.He will leave his home at 7 am and will not re­turn un­til 11 pm. "I stay at home with his moth­er and two-year-old child leav­ing him to run the busi­ness by him­self," she said.She added, "We are in trou­ble as we owe the bank, his moth­er's health has turned for the worst."

The fam­i­ly is con­tem­plat­ing on clos­ing down the busi­ness­es and re­turn­ing to their home­land in Chi­na.The restau­rant re­mained closed yes­ter­day with lit can­dles and flow­ers on a ta­ble in­side the restau­rant. This is tra­di­tion­al spir­i­tu­al cus­tom prac­tised by the Chi­nese on the death of one of their kind.

Po­lice were seen at the busi­ness pro­vid­ing some se­cu­ri­ty for both cus­tomers and the rel­a­tives of Cao.As word spread about the killing cus­tomers be­gan to gath­ered in small groups and were all seemed to be shocked. Most of them say why kill a nice man?

Chong, whose nick­name was Andy, was loved by all his cus­tomers and res­i­dents of La Hor­quet­ta and en­vi­rons. They said he al­ways do­nat­ed to char­i­ty and wor­thy caus­es in the com­mu­ni­ty.

In­ves­ti­ga­tors said they were hav­ing dif­fi­cul­ties to find a mo­tive for Cao's killing adding that the lan­guage bar­ri­er was prov­ing to be an added hur­dle in solv­ing the killing. Po­lice said fol­low­ing the post mortem, which will be done to­day, they may make fur­ther head­way in the in­ves­ti­ga­tion.

The killing has brought the mur­der toll for the year to 22. Homi­cide de­tec­tives are con­tin­u­ing in­ves­ti­ga­tions. – With re­port­ing by Ralph Ban­warie

Flash­back

On April 7 last year Hi Hong Huang, 35, was fa­tal­ly shot as he strug­gled with two ban­dits dur­ing a rob­bery out­side his busi­ness, Hap­pi­ness Su­per­mar­ket, along the South­ern Main Road. CCTV footage re­vealed he was shot by one of the men as he at­tempt­ed to wres­tle with an­oth­er to pre­vent them from es­cap­ing with a box con­tain­ing ap­prox­i­mate­ly $500,000. Four peo­ple, two men and two women, have been held for the rob­bery and mur­der and are now be­fore the courts.


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