An­na-Lisa Paul

Days af­ter four San­ta Cruz men were shot dead at Dami­an’s Bay, Mara­cas, on Ju­ly 2, a Barataria man has been killed in San­ta Cruz.

Sashaly Ryan, 35, was shot dead at Holo­lo Road around 9 am on Wednes­day.

An em­ploy­ee of the San Juan Laven­tille Re­gion­al Cor­po­ra­tion (SJL­RC), Ryan was among three peo­ple who were shot by an un­known gun­man as they changed clothes and packed away their tools fol­low­ing the morn­ing’s work.

The fa­ther of two boys, aged 10 and 12, died at the scene, while one man was shot in the hip and an­oth­er in the fin­ger.

The in­jured men were tak­en to the Port-of-Spain Gen­er­al Hos­pi­tal where they were both treat­ed.

One man was said to be ward­ed up to last evening, while the oth­er was dis­charged.

Ryan’s rel­a­tives were at the scene yes­ter­day but de­clined to speak.

How­ev­er, res­i­dents de­scribed the vic­tim as a “qui­et, re­spectable young man.”

One woman, who re­quest­ed her name not be used, said she had just left home to get a taxi to head to work when she heard the gun­shots and ran back home.

Con­tact­ed about the shoot­ing, SJL­RC Chair­man An­tho­ny Roberts said, “I can con­firm three em­ploy­ees got shot and one died.”

Asked if this lat­est de­vel­op­ment would im­pact the SJL­RC’s op­er­a­tions in the San­ta Cruz com­mu­ni­ty, or if se­cu­ri­ty would now be as­signed to teams as they per­form their du­ties out­doors, he said, “When­ev­er we have that sit­u­a­tion, it is not new to us. What we do is to call the team to­geth­er and pro­vide coun­selling.”

He added, “We can­not pro­vide se­cu­ri­ty for the work­ers. It is a na­tion­al is­sue and it is a po­lice mat­ter.”

Ryan’s wife, mean­while, said he was her best friend, in­tel­li­gent and kind to every­one he met. She said he did bar­ber­ing as a side hus­tle, but nev­er charged chil­dren.

Re­fer­ring to the in­ci­dent, she said Ryan re­port­ed­ly leaned over to shield an el­der­ly man from be­ing shot and as the gun­man fled, his co-work­ers placed him in the tray of the cor­po­ra­tion’s truck to take him to hos­pi­tal but were un­able to pro­ceed as the tyres had all been shot out.

Oth­er rel­a­tives said Ryan had al­ways been a qui­et per­son who kept to him­self.

They be­lieve he was not the in­tend­ed tar­get and it was a mat­ter of be­ing in the wrong place at the wrong time.