Chinese businessman shot

Sunday Newsday was told that shortly after midday, two gunmen entered a Chinese restaurant at Cocorite Road and announced a hold-up. The bandits targeted an area of the restaurant where several electronic roulette machines, used for gambling purposes, were positioned. Customers of both the restaurant and those at the roulette machines were forced to lie on the floor.

The gunmen began to relieve them of their valuables including watches, cellular phones, wallets and jewellery. On hearing shouts, the owner Ling Lum Ma, 45, came to the front of the restaurant to see what was going on. On seeing his customers on the floor, Lum Ma confronted the bandits and was shot once in the chest.

As the businessman slumped to the floor, the bandits ran out of the restaurant and escaped in a car parked nearby. A report was made to the Arima police and the badly bleeding, semi-conscious man was rushed to the nearby district hospital and later transferred to the Eric Williams Medical Sciences Complex in Mt Hope where up to press time, he remained warded at the High Dependency Unit in a critical condition.

Police officers, on being alerted to the robbery and shooting, cordoned off several roads in the Borough in an ultimately futile attempt at intercepting the getaway car and arresting the bandits. Up to press time, officers were trying to secure closed-circuit tv (CCTV) images from cameras mounted on walls and near the ceilings of surrounding buildings outside the restaurant in an effort to identify the gunmen.

Investigations are ongoing.

It was not known if the roulette machines were broken into at the time of the robbery. Police were yesterday cautioning businessmen especially owners of bars and restaurants which have these electronic gambling machines to have proper security in place including CCTV cameras as bandits are specifically targeting establishments with these machines which are magnets for gamblers who spend big money hoping to win money.

A source said that a robbery at a bar in Toco several months ago, in which bandits broke open six electronic slot machines located inside the bar led to bandits making off with over $80,000 from the slot machines.