(Trinidad Express) – A ceiling contractor and his employee were gunned down while buying food at a bar in El Socorro on Wednesday night.

Jason Dwarika, owner of Gypsum Interiors, was shot in the back before bandits ripped off his gold chain. He was then shot in the neck, an eyewitness said.

His employee, 19-year-old Ashton Daniel Jonas, was shot in the back while running away, police said.
Another employee, Shane Lochan, hid under a table and escaped unhurt.
The shooting happened around 10.30 pm outside D Corro Pub on the El Socorro Main Road. The men were doing their very first job ever in Northern Trinidad.

“We had just finished the job and was coming home, when we stopped to get something to eat. I went to the adjoining bar to get some drinks and my boss and Ashton were getting the food. I just hear a lot of noise and when I realised it was gunshots I ran and hid under a table,” he said.

Lochan, 28, who was in shock described his boss as “a loving, generous man who would never hesitate to help someone in need”.

Dwarika, 26, was the father of two girls-Abbi, five, and three-year-old Ariel.
He lived at SS Erin Road, Debe with his 25-year-old wife, Lauren.
“I don’t know what, they kill my husband for a chain. They kill my husband for what? A $10,000?,” she said outside the Forensic Science Complex in St James.

The widow told the Express that at about 10.15 pm, her husband called her, telling her that he was coming home soon. He along with his workers had completed their day’s work on the ceiling of a dentist’s office in St James and had stopped to buy food at a stall outside the bar, she was told.
Within 15 minutes her phone rang again.

“His co-worker called back, saying he get shoot and then I heard the woman from the bar saying if I wanted to see him alive again, I should hurry to the hospital, because he not looking like he going to hold up,” Lauren said, adding that she had not and did not know how to tell the couple’s two daughters, Abbi and Ariel.