Daughter demands death penalty

Despite the call for forgiveness by lay minister Fay Rodrigues at the service, Geeta with tears streaming down her face, openly demanded justice.

“Bring back the hangman. Hang them high. That is what I want. The hangman must come back. Is justice I want for my father and I want the Prime Minister to do something about crime, because is everyday somebody dying,” she said.

Geeta said her father’s murder followed the death a year ago of her mother from diabetes.

“January 3, was the one year anniversary of my mother’s death and a week after that anniversary, my father got killed,” she said. Geeta told Newsday that her husband Ganesh often accompanied her father on fishing trips but did not go on that fateful day because he had to work.

Her sister Tara, wept uncontrollably at the service as she too also called for justice saying that her father never harmed anyone.

“I don’t know what to say. I just can’t understand why someone would do that to him because he never interfered with anyone,” Tara said. In a simple funeral service held yesterday morning for Squires, a father and grandfather of two, lay minister Rodrigues called for close relatives and friends to forgive the killers.

“Forgiveness comes from God and we are called to forgive. In fact we should not be holding anything against anybody because we are only damaging ourselves. When we hold something against another person, the only person you harm is yourself, you destroy yourself,” Rodrigues said.

Saying that greed and jealousy were among some of the “biggest sickness” in the world today, Rodrigues told mourners that they should leave the church as “changed” persons.

“We are going out there to love,” Rodrigues said. “We will make a difference because we love God and don’t let greed cause us to sin our souls.” Squires’ white coffin was opened for a very brief period to allow a videographer to record before it was closed and taken to the Waterloo Cremation site for cremation.