Sascha Wil­son

Se­nior Re­porter

sascha.wil­son@guardian.co.tt

Mo­ments be­fore rob­bing and mur­der­ing busi­ness­man Videsh Ma­haraj at his New Grant home yes­ter­day morn­ing, the gun­man calm­ly greet­ed the vic­tim’s wife as he walked past her.

Ma­haraj, the own­er of V Ma­haraj Cool­ing Ser­vices, was shot at least three times and robbed of his cell­phone and $8,000 as he sat in his van in the garage of his home at Tor­rib Tabaquite Road, Busy Cor­ner.

In an in­ter­view hours lat­er, his wife Sharmil­la Ma­haraj, a teacher, said just be­fore 8 am, she was stand­ing in front of their home wait­ing for a taxi to go to work. Her hus­band came down­stairs and opened the garage door. She heard the van start and his phone ring.

She said she was about to ask her hus­band to give her a ride out the street to get a taxi when the sus­pect walked past her.

“The guy told me good morn­ing and I told him good morn­ing. Then I no­ticed him walk­ing down the hill (in her yard). I say, but what is he go­ing down the hill for by the van by my hus­band. When I reached halfway down, I heard the guy say, ‘Give me your phone now or I will shoot you.’”

She said she ran out of the yard, flagged down a taxi that hap­pened to be pass­ing at that time and told the dri­ver she be­lieved a ban­dit was try­ing to rob her hus­band and had threat­ened to shoot him. The taxi dri­ver took her to her in-law’s home to get help and on the way they called the po­lice.

Ma­haraj said her hus­band’s broth­er went to the house and found him slumped in the dri­ver’s seat of his van.

“He was not breath­ing. When I feel un­der his nose and on top of his chest, he was not breath­ing. A cousin came down and start­ed to pump his chest. He got a pulse,” she said.

They took her hus­band to the Princes Town Health Fa­cil­i­ty where he was pro­nounced dead.

Ma­haraj said her hus­band was shot twice in the stom­ach and once in his leg.

“I am not sure if he might have put up a fight be­cause he would al­so say give them what they want and let them go. He was a strong per­son. He was sit­ting in the van, ready to dri­ve out. If I had stuck around I would have al­so got­ten shot. That is the re­al­i­ty,” she said.

Try­ing to hold back tears, Ma­haraj said she did not know why her hus­band was tar­get­ed.

“It is a qui­et area. Most of the neigh­bours are work­ing. It re­al­ly baf­fled me as to why this guy came for him, and how long he was tar­get­ing and watch­ing him,” she said.

The cou­ple had been mar­ried for 14 years and had a four-year-old son who was at his grand­par­ents’ home at the time of the shoot­ing.

Ma­haraj said her hus­band was law-abid­ing and fam­i­ly-ori­ent­ed.

“I nev­er thought that this would hap­pen to us. We are nor­mal, hum­ble peo­ple. Any­one my hus­band knows, he would give them a ride,” she said.

While she was hope­ful her hus­band’s killer would be ar­rest­ed, Ma­haraj added: “But, we know this is Trinidad and how things are here.”

Of­fi­cers from Homi­cide Bu­reau Re­gion 3 are in­ves­ti­gat­ing.