PORT OF SPAIN, Trinidad (CMC) – Police say they are working on the theory that a United States resident was shot and killed during a botched robbery in San Fernando, south of here, earlier this week.
Media reports here said that famed Hindu palm reader Mahadeo Jerrybandhan, 74, a resident of Key West, Florida, who was on vacation, was shot and killed at his son’s home on Monday night.
He was shot once to the head in a bedroom and his daughter-in-law, Sharlene Mootoo, said she last saw him with his two nephews preparing for Pitri Paksh, an auspicious period in the Hindu religious calendar.
“When we looked we saw someone running out of the front gate. We went to the front bedroom and saw him (Jerrybandhan) lying in the bathroom of the front bedroom. He had one gunshot wound to his head,” she told reporters.
Mootoo said Jerrybandhan, a retired secondary school teacher, came to Trinidad annually to observe the religious period.
“This is weird. Just out of the blue this happened. We are still in shock. He was a man who exercised, did yoga and ate healthy all the time. I believe he knew his attackers and in a panic they shot and killed him because he would have been able to identify them,” Mootoo said.
So far this year, 292 people have been murdered in Trinidad.