An­na-Lisa Paul

Short­ly af­ter ban­dits gunned down a Chi­nese busi­ness­man in San Juan on Fri­day night dur­ing a botched rob­bery, po­lice shot and killed one of the as­sailants.

Bing Zhu Zhang, 49, al­so called Ncholas, was the own­er of Gold­en City Su­per­mar­ket, Sil­ver Mill, San Juan.

Po­lice of­fi­cers re­spond­ing to the shoot­ing were able to track the three sus­pects who re­port­ed­ly en­tered the San Juan Riv­er af­ter shoot­ing Zhang.

It is re­port­ed that as of­fi­cers searched the area, one of the sus­pects al­leged­ly fired at them.

Re­turn­ing fire in keep­ing with the Use of Force Pol­i­cy, the of­fi­cers re­port­ed­ly killed the sus­pect dur­ing the ex­change.

Of­fi­cers re­port­ed­ly re­cov­ered one Glock pis­tol, one mag­a­zine, and 12 rounds of 9 mm am­mu­ni­tion on the sus­pect, who re­mained uniden­ti­fied up to yes­ter­day.

Zhang re­port­ed­ly closed his gro­cery around 10 pm and went to drop off an em­ploy­ee at home in Barataria on Fri­day.

Up­on his re­turn around 10.20 pm, he was am­bushed by three men who had been hid­ing be­hind an ice freez­er on the west­ern side of the gat­ed com­pound.

It is al­leged that the busi­ness­man strug­gled with his as­sailants be­fore be­ing shot.

Zhang was as­sist­ed by a fe­male rel­a­tive who lives on the premis­es and was tak­en to the Er­ic Williams Med­ical Sci­ences Com­plex, Mt Hope, by po­lice where he died.

He was a mem­ber of the Toy Shan As­so­ci­a­tion and had been liv­ing in Trinidad since 1992.

Police officers patrolling in front of the Golden City Supermarket following the murder of its owner Bing Zhu Zhang.

ABRAHAM DIAZ

Two Chi­nese na­tion­als who were seen speak­ing with in­ves­ti­ga­tors at the Gold­en City Su­per­mar­ket yes­ter­day de­clined to speak with the Sun­day Guardian about the in­ci­dent.

When asked how soon the gro­cery would be re­opened, one man sim­ply said, “We don’t know.”

Neigh­bours de­scribed Zhang as a, “Very, very good per­son who was loved by all.”

In the com­mu­ni­ty yes­ter­day, at least one own­er of a near­by busi­ness moved to tight­en her se­cu­ri­ty.

The op­er­a­tor of a small gro­cery lo­cat­ed me­tres away from where Zhang was shot, was seen point­ing out en­try and ex­it routes to ad­di­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty guards.

Res­i­dents in the im­me­di­ate vicin­i­ty said while they were sad­dened over the killing, they could not af­ford to al­ter their com­ings and go­ings any fur­ther as they were “al­ready liv­ing in a prison.” One man, com­ment­ing on the down­ward spi­ral with the crime sit­u­a­tion in T&T, pre­dict­ed, “It is go­ing to get worse be­fore it gets bet­ter.”

Zhang was among three peo­ple killed be­tween Fri­day night and yes­ter­day.