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alexk
Guest
“It is the worse experience of my life to see your child dying in your hand,” sobbed Roopchand Moonisar as he recalled how gunmen shot up their car, killing his daughter and injuring him.
Moonisar, who was discharged from the hospital on Saturday, had no idea why they were attacked, but police believe it was a hit on his daughter Mariana Moonisar, 29, an administrative clerk in Parliament.
The killers failed at their first attempt to kill her on Friday morning when she was heading to work in her car, but came back in the evening when she was returning home.
Moonisar said he usually dropped her to Couva on mornings to take the bus to work and after work he would pick her up in Chaguanas.
According to a police report, around 5.15 pm two men emerged from the bushes near the Esperanza Junction, Couva and opened fire on the car.
Moonisar was shot in the head while her father was shot in the neck. Police recovered about eight spent shells. Recalling on ordeal at his Esperanza Village home, Moonisar, 56, employed at the Couva/Talparo/Regional Corporation, said after they left home around 5 am they heard about three gunshots, but he thought someone was shooting at a dog which ran in front of their car.
He said after he picked her up they stopped at KFC Point Lisas branch before heading home. He said, “Just as we reach the junction by Esperanza I saw two persons stand up by a pole. I never saw them in my life. The car slowed down and we were going to approach them. All I hear was gunshots. When I watch my daughter was shot in her head. She fell back on the seat. I didn’t even know I got shot. At that time I tried to save my daughter. I was thinking I could still save her. When she got shot the car was slowing down and the shots were still firing. I took my hand and went down to the accelerator and I mashed the accelerator and hold the steering. After we reached a certain point, I slammed the gear lever down and looked for the brakes and I mashed it and the car stop.”
He said he stood on the road bawling for help, but people were passing straight.” Eventually, he said, a man he knows stopped and helped them.
He said, “Dad” was the last word uttered by his daughter.
The villager took them to the hospital in his AD wagon. “I opened the door and took her in my hand and I lifted her and took her to his car trunk in the AD wagon. I lie down inside with her on my hand. She was bleeding terrible. I watched her and I begged her, ‘Don’t die on daddy hand at all.’ He said they were transferred from Couva Hospital to the San Fernando General Hospital where his daughter died around 8.40 pm.
He underwent surgery to remove a bullet from his neck. He said his daughter never went to parties, drank alcohol or smoked cigarettes.
The father said she had boyfriend in her life, a police officer, but they broke up last year. Moonisar said about two and a half months ago his daughter went to the police station because her ex-boyfriend had called her and said he had something to drop for her. Moonisar said he shared a very close bond with his daughter and she would have confided in him if she had been threatened or harassed.