CHINESE WOMAN MURDERED

While Forensic Pathologist Dr Valery Alexandrov was performing an autopsy on Hua’s body yesterday at the Forensic Science Centre in St James, the dead woman’s husband Yang Jiang Hua, also 60, remained in a critical condition at the Intensive Care Unit of the Eric Williams Medical Sciences Complex in Mt Hope, as he too was shot during the robbery.

According to police, at about 9.45 pm on Thursday, Hua and his wife were at their businessplace which is located on the ground floor of their home off the Southern Main Road in Cunupia when gunmen entered the restaurant and without warning, shot the two Chinese nationals.

As Wu Xiu and her husband Yang, both lay on the ground bleeding profusely, the gunmen seized a quantity of cash and a laptop before running out of the restaurant.

The couple’s daughter-in-law Gu Yan Yo, 30, who was in the living quarters on the top floor of the building, heard the gunshots and ran downstairs to the restaurant where she saw the couple on the floor. Wu Xiu was already unconscious while Yang was coughing up blood.

A hysterical Gu Yan used her cellular phone to call other relatives who in turn contacted the Cunupia Police Station.

Officers from both the Cunupia and Chaguanas police stations arrived on the scene but could get little information from Gu Yan or Yang who both speak little English. The couple was rushed to the Chaguanas Health Centre where Wu Xiu was pronounced dead on arrival. Her husband was stabilised and transferred to the EWMSC where he was treated and warded at the Intensive Care Unit in critical condition.

When Newsday visited the restaurant which was closed yesterday, a friend of the murder victim said that Wu Xiu and Yang were a very private couple. The friend confirmed that the dead woman and her husband were both originally from China.

The friend said that the couple opened the restaurant several years ago and recently, were planning to expand and renovate the business. Traumatised relatives of the dead woman, who spoke in Chinese, were assisting police yesterday via help from a translator.

Sources revealed that the husband of the murder victim was visited yesterday at hospital by officials of the Chinese embassy including China’s Ambassador to Trinidad and Tobago Yang Yu Ming.

Contacted for comment yesterday, Deputy Police Commissioner Mervyn Richardson said, “Officers of the Homicide Bureau and the Central Division Criminal Investigations Department and other sections are collectively working to shed some light on this ghastly act.”

Richardson said the police are seeking information from members of the public who can assist in bringing the perpetrators to justice. “I am appealing to members of the public who may have information, no matter how minute, which they believe will assist in forming the bigger picture,” Richardson said.

Adding, that he wished to assure the community at large that the police, along with other social partners are doing all in their power to bring the spiralling crime rate down, Richardson said he is confident his officers will treat with any information received in the strictest of confidence.

The murder toll now stands at 225. Up to press time, no arrest was made and a party of officers under the supervision of Senior Superintendent Deodath Dulalchan, Superintendent Johnny Abraham and ASP May Harris were investigating.