After spending the Christmas weekend at their father’s Marabella home, two San Juan children awoke to harrowing sight of his bloodied body lying next to them.
Police said Roger James, 45, was asleep on a mattress with his 16-year-old son and nine-year-old daughter at his Bayshore Avenue home.
Around 6.30 am, a gunman walked into his wooden shack and shot him twice.
Jolted by the shots, his son looked across and found him bleeding on the mattress. Neighbours called the police and a team of officers led by ACP Cecil Santana, ASP Rawle Ramdeo, Insp Don Gajadhar and Insp Sean Dhilpaul responded and processed the scene. A search was also made for a suspect but up to late afternoon no one was arrested.
The shack located in the area known as “Pakistan” has missing doors and walls. Investigators said James’ wife, Janelle Waldron, of Febeau Village, San Juan, their daughter, Mary James, 27 and the two children spent the holiday weekend with James, a welder who sometimes did work at the Water Taxi terminal in San Fernando.
Waldron and Mary left the house around 6 am to returned to San Juan, leaving James and the younger children asleep.
Neighbours said all they heard were two guns shots and later learned that James was shot behind the head and neck. There were also injuries to his fingers. They said he only moved to the community last year and was a calm person who would come out to play draughts and “ole talk” with them.
Police said an initial check showed that James had no criminal record and they are yet to determine a motive for his murder. However, relatives believe the suspect might be a family member who waited for Waldron and Mary to leave the house before the gun attack.
It was the second shooting in Marabella in three days as Dixon Richards, 22, was shot while walking home on Saturday night.
Police said Dixon was liming at a neighbour’s home at Bay Road, Marabella, when around 8 pm, he left to go to his house a short distance away to get a piece of ham for one of his friends.
While returning, he was hit in stomach by a stray bullet from a shootout between two men in the area.
He was taken to the San Fernando General Hospital where he underwent emergency surgery and he remains warded in stable condition.