(Trinidad Express) – Miguel Modeste, a 24-year-old mason, was forced to lie face down on his bed before he was shot once in the head, his relatives said on Sunday.

Modeste was asleep at his San Fabien, Gasparillo, home with his 19-year-old girlfriend, known only as Jessica, when someone knocked at the front door.

“They said it was police so he opened the door. But it was two men wearing masks. They made both of them lie down on the bed and shot him in the head,” his sister, Rachael Ann Modeste, said.

The gunmen, who were dressed in regiment clothing, then removed the woman’s engagement ring from her finger and walked out the house. The shooting occurred around 4.10 am. Modeste, whose killing pushed the toll to 22 for the year, died at the scene. His girlfriend escaped unhurt.

“We believe someone paid the men to kill my brother. It was a hit and he was killed execution style. And we cannot understand why they took his girlfriend’s engagement ring and nothing else,” his sister said.

Around midday on Saturday, relatives said, several men began throwing stones at Modeste’s house. “My brother was involved with an older woman. That woman and his present girlfriend had an argument earlier in the day and then some of the older woman’s relatives came and stone down his house. We believe the incidents are connected,” Modeste said.

Anndane Modeste, his mother, said she last saw her son on Saturday afternoon.

“He came to tell me about the incident where the men were pelting his house. Someone killed my child and now I am leaving it up to the police and God to deal with them. If they had something against my son, they did not have to kill him. He was never involved in anything illegal, just the relationship he had with these two women,” she said.

Modeste said she was awakened by the screams of her son’s girlfriend.

“They live in a house behind our house, so I heard when she was bawling and saw her running coming here,” she said. Homicide detectives are continuing investigations.