RALPH BAN­WARIE

A 50-year-old Va­len­cia man was stabbed to death by men who re­port­ed­ly am­bushed him yes­ter­day morn­ing.

Lester Cruick­shank, 50, who is self-em­ployed and resided at Clarence Trace, Va­len­cia, died af­ter he was stabbed sev­er­al times about his body by two men around 2 am.

Po­lice re­port­ed that the 24-year-old daugh­ter of the de­ceased, who lives with him, was asleep when she was awak­ened by loud screams com­ing from her fa­ther for help. She went to his as­sis­tance and found her fa­ther ly­ing to the back of their home in a pool of blood. She al­so saw two men with their faces cov­ered with ski masks stand­ing next to her fa­ther’s body. On see­ing her, the men ran out of the house and es­caped.

The trau­ma­tised daugh­ter ran out the front door and went to a neigh­bour’s house where she con­tact­ed the Va­len­cia po­lice.

WPC Rique and PC Benoit re­spond­ed and found Cruick­shank with mul­ti­ple stab wounds about the body.

Al­so vis­it­ing the scene were Ag In­sp. Ram­lakhan, of­fi­cers of San­gre Grande and Va­len­cia Task Force and SERU Of­fi­cers at­tached to the Arou­ca Homi­cide Bu­reau un­der the su­per­vi­sion of Sgt Stanis­claus.

The crime scene was processed by SERU’s WPCs Liv­er­pool and Cadette.

Dis­trict Med­ical Of­fi­cer Dr Nzed­in­ma viewed the body, which was sub­se­quent­ly re­moved by un­der­tak­ers to be sent to the Foren­sic Sci­ence Cen­tre, St James, for post mortem.

En­quiries are con­tin­u­ing by Arou­ca Homi­cide Bu­reau.

The stab­bing to death of Cruick­shank took the mur­der toll for the year to 82.