A Cara­pichaima busi­ness­man was one of two men killed dur­ing an al­leged rob­bery on Thurs­day.

The car parts pro­pri­etor was iden­ti­fied as Mario Maraj, 37, of Rod­ney Road, Or­ange­field Road, Cara­pichaima, while the sec­ond de­ceased, be­lieved to be one of the sus­pects, re­mained uniden­ti­fied up to yes­ter­day.

Po­lice said res­i­dents re­port­ed hear­ing gun­shots com­ing from the house around 1.10 pm, and re­spond­ing of­fi­cers ar­rived to find Maraj in a kneel­ing po­si­tion in the front yard, bleed­ing from gun­shot wounds to the head and chest. He was at the time gasp­ing for breath and ap­peared to have a faint pulse.

The of­fi­cers con­tact­ed the Emer­gency Health Ser­vices and at­tend­ing per­son­nel ar­rived and placed Maraj to lie on his back, but by that time he was dead.

As the of­fi­cers searched the com­pound, they found the sec­ond de­ceased in Maraj’s apart­ment, which is on the up­per floor.

The uniden­ti­fied African male, who was de­scribed as five feet, nine inch­es tall and of dark com­plex­ion, was wear­ing a black hood­ie, white vest, blue three-quar­ter jeans and a pair of green Nike sneak­ers. He was found ly­ing in a pool of blood in the kitchen, with wounds to the chest and head.

A quan­ti­ty of cash to­talling $10,364 was found scat­tered around him.

Ten spent shell cas­ings of vary­ing cal­i­bre were found at the scene, along with a cell phone and a cig­a­rette lighter.

The mon­ey was lat­er hand­ed over to Maraj’s next of kin, along with his wal­let.

Po­lice said Maraj, who op­er­ates his busi­ness on the ground floor of his apart­ment build­ing, had been in the com­pa­ny of oth­er peo­ple con­duct­ing sales when three men en­tered the com­pound and de­mand­ed cash and valu­ables.

The uniden­ti­fied man forced Maraj up­stairs to his apart­ment, fol­low­ing which gun­shots were heard a short while lat­er.

Maraj was be­lieved to have at­tempt­ed to es­cape by run­ning off and was al­leged­ly con­front­ed by the oth­er sus­pects in the front yard, where he was sup­pos­ed­ly made to kneel and shot mul­ti­ple times.

A white Nis­san Ti­i­da was found aban­doned ap­prox­i­mate­ly 200 feet from the crime scene with blood on the bon­net.

The car, which was re­port­ed stolen, was tak­en to the Spe­cial Ev­i­dence Re­cov­ery Unit in Cu­mu­to. - An­na-Lisa Paul