A Cen­tral busi­ness­man was shot in the head and died while be­hind the wheel of his truck, mo­ments af­ter he ar­rived at a con­struc­tion site on Thurs­day with mon­ey to pay work­ers.

Po­lice said Jose Luis Guz­man Oroz­co, 44, ar­rived at the site off Be­ju­cal Road, Ch­agua­nas, at 4.20 pm, af­ter re­port­ed­ly leav­ing a bank and was speak­ing to some of his work­ers when a blue Hyundai Ac­cent drove up and stopped be­hind his white Hilux.

Po­lice said two masked, armed men ran out and point­ed firearms in Oroz­co’s di­rec­tion.

Oroz­co was the con­trac­tor/own­er of JLG Con­struc­tion Ltd of Chin Chin Road, Cunu­pia, and Rock Riv­er Road, St He­le­na.

The gun­men or­dered the vic­tim, who was still seat­ed in the dri­ver’s seat, to “pass it.”

One of the sus­pects then picked up a shov­el, broke the right side rear glass and grabbed a black bag which was on the seat.

The as­sailants then in­struct­ed the work­ers to run.

The sus­pects then shot Oroz­co in the head be­fore dri­ving off.

When the work­ers re­turned, they saw him slumped be­hind the wheel of his truck and flagged down a po­lice of­fi­cer on mo­bile pa­trol along Be­ju­cal Road and re­port­ed the shoot­ing.

The of­fi­cer lat­er found Oroz­co with gun­shot wounds to the left side of the head.

He was de­clared dead.

Of­fi­cers found three spent 9mm shell cas­ings, along with a shov­el at the scene.

Ram­bal­ly: Ur­gent ac­tion

need­ed in Cen­tral to bat­tle crime

Ch­agua­nas West MP Di­nesh Ram­bal­ly said the lat­est mur­der had left the com­mu­ni­ty deeply dis­turbed.

“This heinous act, re­port­ed­ly car­ried out af­ter he was fol­lowed from a bank where he with­drew cash to pay his work­ers, is yet an­oth­er grim re­minder of how crim­i­nals are tar­get­ing busi­ness­es and hard­work­ing cit­i­zens in Cen­tral Trinidad.”

He added, “The lev­el of law­less­ness we are wit­ness­ing is ab­solute­ly un­ac­cept­able.

“Crim­i­nals can­not and must not be al­lowed to op­er­ate with im­puni­ty. It is out­ra­geous that busi­ness own­ers, who are the back­bone of our econ­o­my and pro­vide em­ploy­ment op­por­tu­ni­ties for so many, now live in con­stant fear of be­ing tar­get­ed.”

He called on the Trinidad and To­ba­go Po­lice Ser­vice (TTPS) to ur­gent­ly in­crease its ef­forts to en­sure the safe­ty and se­cu­ri­ty of cit­i­zens.

Ram­bal­ly said, “We need strate­gic in­ter­ven­tions to pro­tect in­di­vid­u­als from be­ing fol­lowed af­ter bank trans­ac­tions, more vis­i­ble po­lice pres­ence in high-risk ar­eas, and im­me­di­ate ac­tion to dis­man­tle crim­i­nal net­works that are wreak­ing hav­oc on our com­mu­ni­ties.”

He called on the Min­is­ter of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty and the lead­er­ship of the TTPS to take de­ci­sive ac­tion.

“My thoughts and prayers are with the fam­i­ly and loved ones of Jose Luis dur­ing this in­cred­i­bly dif­fi­cult time. I will con­tin­ue to ad­vo­cate for stronger mea­sures to com­bat crime in our con­stituen­cy and across the na­tion.

“We all de­serve to live and work with­out fear. Let us ho­n­our the mem­o­ry of those we have lost by de­mand­ing re­al change and hold­ing our lead­ers ac­count­able.”