Hours af­ter he was jolt­ed out of his sleep by in­trud­ers in his home, beat­en, robbed and kid­napped, 69-year-old Win­ston Thomas was found dead in his car along the busy Sir Solomon Ho­choy High­way.

The pen­sion­er was stabbed in the head by men who po­lice de­scribed as Span­ish-speak­ing sus­pects.

Po­lice said of­fi­cers re­ceived in­for­ma­tion some­time af­ter 10 am that Thomas’ ve­hi­cle, a white B15 Nis­san, was parked along the north­bound lane of the Sir Solomon Ho­choy High­way near Gol­con­da. 

When High­way Pa­trol of­fi­cers re­spond­ed around 10.30 am, they saw Thomas’ bloody body cov­ered with cloth­ing in the back seat. His hands were tied be­hind his back. 

About eight hours ear­li­er around 2.15 am, of­fi­cers from the Pe­nal Po­lice Sta­tion re­ceived a re­port from res­i­dents of Ali Av­enue, Pe­nal Rock Road, that they heard Thomas be­ing beat­en. Some saw him be­ing forced in­to the back seat of his car by sev­er­al Span­ish-speak­ing men.

The sus­pects al­so placed Thomas’ TV and red 20-lb gas tank in the back seat and drove off. The po­lice searched ex­ten­sive­ly through the Pe­nal Rock Road, Morne Di­a­blo, Seemu­n­gal Trace, Scott’s Road and Bun­see Trace ar­eas for the pen­sion­er.

Cap­tain Val­lence Ramb­harat of Hunters Search and Res­cue Team (HSRT) post­ed a miss­ing per­son’s fly­er on the group’s so­cial me­dia page in a bid to help find him.

But be­fore the team could be­gin search­ing, a mem­ber of the pub­lic com­ment­ed un­der the post that Thomas’ car was spot­ted on the high­way.  When HSRT mem­ber Kesraj Sook­nanan ar­rived, the po­lice were al­ready on the scene.

Sev­er­al rel­a­tives and peo­ple gath­ered at the scene were sad and an­gry over the pen­sion­er’s mur­der.

Thomas’ daugh­ter, Jan­nelle Thomas, said her fa­ther lived alone in a rental apart­ment. She said she heard her fa­ther was asleep when men shoved their hands through a win­dow and opened the door. 

She said that giv­en his age she doubt­ed her fa­ther would have been able to put up a fight.

Jan­nelle said rel­a­tives were search­ing for her fa­ther when they learnt his car was found.  They drove im­me­di­ate­ly to the scene.

In­ves­ti­ga­tors be­lieve the sus­pects were forced to aban­don Thomas’ car be­cause the tyre blew out.

The stolen items were not re­cov­ered.  

Thomas’ daugh­ter says he had grand­chil­dren who loved him.

Po­lice are work­ing on the the­o­ry that Thomas had an is­sue with some Venezue­lan na­tion­als from the area some time ago and are seek­ing to in­ter­view those in­di­vid­u­als.

Of­fi­cers of the South­ern Di­vi­sion, South West­ern Di­vi­sion and Homi­cide Bu­reau 3 were at the scene, and homi­cide de­tec­tives are in­ves­ti­gat­ing.