Popular West Berbice businessman,Tony Bisnath aka ‘Uncle Tony’ of Lot 23 Stelling Road,Rosignol was shot dead by one of three armed men while celebrating his 78^th birthday outside his home around 23:15hrs on Friday night.

Eyewitnesses said that the motive appeared to be robbery.

Eyewitness reports stated that the three men wore masks and were all armed with handguns.The businessman was seated outside his snackette at Stelling Road when the three approached the celebrants at the party on foot,pointed guns at them and told them not to move.One of them immediately shot the business man in the head.

Another opened fire on Bobby Brijlall,a neighbor who moved aside seconds before he pulled the trigger and miraculously escaped with a slight graze from the bullet on his right side abdomen.

While the celebrants at the party remained frozen in terror, the third masked man opened fire on  23-year old Mahendra Nagamootoo hitting him three times once on the arm and once on his side and once in his lower back when he attempted to flee the scene.

The men then demanded cash and jewellery and one of them ran through the pockets of the fallen businessman and removed cash and a cell phone.They then robbed other persons at the party of cash and cell phones.

They then made good their escape by running into a street parallel to the stelling road. One of them uplifted a bicycle he had apparently placed on the roadway and they all ran away in the direction of the Sawmill Street in Rosignol.

Bisnath’s companion of thirteen years Ms. Sunita Khanhai also known as ‘Sandra’ said that she was sitting next to him when he was shot.She said he slumped to the ground and remained still.

She said after the bandits left she frantically tried to revive him but to no avail.

He was rushed to the Fort Wellington Hospital where he was pronounced dead on arrival. Bisnath all his neighbors said,was a quiet,mild mannered man who loved to play dominoes.

He was a remigrant who returned home after living and working in England for  a number of years and he owned the snackette outside of which himself,friends and neighbours were seated when they were attacked by the three masked men.

Nagamootoo who is nursing three bullet wounds to his body is currently a patient at the New Amsterdam Hospital receiving medical care.His condition was said to be stable.

Meanwhile some residents in Rosignol said that there had been a spate of robberies in the area carried out mainly by armed youths who appeared to be residents in the village.”It looks like a gang of them,” one villager said.

The residents called on the police to investigate and dismantle the gang before they rob and harm other victims. Bisnuth’s wife said that he didn’t deserve to die like that.

“He was a simple man who lived good with all the people around him. All I want is justice,”she said.Police investigations are ongoing.