SASCHA WIL­SON

Se­nior Re­porter

James Ga­jad­har, 77, who was chopped re­peat­ed­ly by a men­tal­ly un­sta­ble man while in his gar­den in Rio Claro on Wednes­day, has died.

A 33-year-old sus­pect is in po­lice cus­tody.

Ac­cord­ing to re­ports, Ga­jad­har went to his gar­den be­hind his home along Old Rio Claro Ma­yaro Road, around 3:30 pm on Wednes­day, to pick ochros. Wor­ried that her hus­band did not re­turn home, his wife went to check on him and found him bleed­ing on the ground with gap­ing wounds about his body.

Ga­jad­har died at the San Fer­nan­do Gen­er­al Hos­pi­tal.

In a Face­book post this morn­ing, his son Rus­sel wrote:

“I nev­er thought the day would come where I [would] have to re­gret to an­nounce the death of my fa­ther, James Ga­jad­har.  He al­ways made sure that his im­me­di­ate fam­i­ly had food on [the] ta­ble and helped Me in every way pos­si­ble in mak­ing it in life. It's sad the way he had to go know­ing he still had life in his body, which was tak­en away by some­one who should of (sic) been in St. Anns.”

He added: “God knows best and I trust in God that one day we'll meet again. I miss and love you Dad, you'll be missed by many, many peo­ple. Rest in Peace Dad. I love you.”

James Ga­jad­har was a pil­lar in the com­mu­ni­ty and loved by many. 

Ma­yaro MP Rush­ton Paray said Ga­jad­har's mur­der is "an­oth­er trag­ic re­minder that crime and vi­o­lence have tight­ened their mer­ci­less grip on our na­tion."

In a state­ment, he lament­ed:

"Our once peace­ful com­mu­ni­ties in the Ma­yaro Con­stituen­cy have been trans­formed in­to dan­ger­ous killing fields, where law­less­ness reigns unchecked. This ram­pant crim­i­nal­i­ty thrives on the per­cep­tion that our po­lice are in­ef­fec­tive, the ju­di­cia­ry is fee­ble, and the prison sys­tem is ut­ter­ly im­po­tent. The coun­try has lost con­fi­dence in every in­sti­tu­tion that is sup­posed to pro­tect us. The pub­lic’s faith in our lead­ers has been shat­tered, and un­less there is a swift and de­ci­sive over­haul of our ap­proach to crime, we are doomed to con­tin­ue down this treach­er­ous path of chaos and de­struc­tion."

The Ma­yaro MP said the time for rhetoric and ex­cus­es has long passed.

"We must con­front the ug­ly truth that with­out a rad­i­cal and im­me­di­ate shift in our na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty strate­gies, the sit­u­a­tion will wors­en. Our peo­ple de­serve bet­ter; they de­mand ac­tion," he said. 

Of­fi­cers of the Homi­cide Bu­reau are in­ves­ti­gat­ing the cir­cum­stances sur­round­ing Ga­jad­har’s mur­der.