Sascha Wil­son and

Kellyann Lemessy

Griev­ing rel­a­tives of 36-year-old Ter­ry Aaron are pray­ing that the per­pe­tra­tors who snuffed out his life and in­jured his cousin dur­ing a shoot­ing at a bar in their neigh­bour­hood will be brought to jus­tice.

Po­lice sus­pect that the gun­men were wait­ing in the bush­es for the op­por­tune time to am­bush Aaron and his 38-year-old cousin while they were lim­ing at Fifty Shades of Gold Bar in Rio Claro on Sat­ur­day night. Around 11.45 pm, Aaron and his cousin were in front of the bar along Na­pari­ma Ma­yaro Road in Union Vil­lage when two gun­men emerged from the bush­es and be­gan shoot­ing at them.

The vic­tims ran in­to the bar where Aaron died while pa­trons took his cousin to the Ma­yaro Health Fa­cil­i­ty. He was treat­ed and trans­ferred to the San­gre Grande Hos­pi­tal where he was in a sta­ble con­di­tion up to yes­ter­day.

Po­lice re­cov­ered 17 spent 5.56 shells, sev­en spent 9mm shells, sev­en pro­jec­tile frag­ments and two pro­jec­tiles at the scene.

In an in­ter­view with Guardian Me­dia, Aaron’s niece said they were heart­bro­ken. She re­called that she was jolt­ed from her sleep by five to sev­en loud ex­plo­sions, which she sus­pect­ed were gun­shots, but her grand­moth­er dis­missed them as fire­works. Less than five min­utes lat­er, she said they heard bawl­ing and scream­ing, and some­one said he got killed.

She said, “I know my un­cle. I know he did not de­serve that. Me, be­ing his niece, I would nev­er have pic­tured this, my un­cle ly­ing on the ground, life­less. When I hold my un­cle hand last night I could not feel noth­ing. He was al­ready gone. My un­cle saw his shoot­er. His eyes were open. You could see he was cry­ing.”

She said about two weeks ago her un­cle was in­volved in an al­ter­ca­tion with a group of peo­ple and they struck him on his head with a bot­tle. He suf­fered a gash over his eye. She said he felt his life was un­der threat so he made a re­port at the po­lice sta­tion and asked the po­lice to in­ter­vene.

“I don’t un­der­stand why peo­ple choose gun­fire vi­o­lence but at the end of the day, we leav­ing it in God’s hands and I hope that God re­al­ly re­veals the per­son who did this cru­el act.”

Lament­ing that his death had left friends and rel­a­tives in shock, she said Aaron was not a bad per­son and was not in­volved in any il­le­gal ac­tiv­i­ties.

“At the end of the day, our fam­i­ly is bro­ken. Who­ev­er did it, I want al­lyuh to know that al­lyuh left a moth­er with­out a son, al­lyuh left nieces and nephews with­out an un­cle.” Homi­cide de­tec­tives are in­ves­ti­gat­ing.