Shot businessman improves

Relatives of Mahadeo Gosine, the 65-year-old grocer who was shot while protecting his Sixth Street, Barataria businessplace, yesterday said he was making good progress as he remains in hospital.

On Tuesday, doctors were able to stabilise Gosine, but were unsure whether they would be able to remove fragments of the bullets that hit him during the shoot-out with bandits.

Yesterday Newsday was told the grocer is responding to medication well and has awoken from his medically induced coma. While he is still heavily medicated, he is showing positive signs that he will recover without incident.

“I think he would be back with us soon. He is a fighter,” said a relative at the Sixth Street Grocery in Barataria.

Although the grocery opened its doors on Tuesday relatives are still living in fear, not knowing if the bandits who attacked Gosine would attempt to rob the supermarket again, or if they will come to exact revenge for their accomplice, Allen Walker, who was killed during the robbery.

Since he opened his doors to the public decades ago, Gosine’s grocery has been victim to several robberies, but relatives said that this was the worst of all the robberies. Over the years, the grocer had made several arrangements to ensure that his business was protected. Now the grocery is equipped with a massive burglar-proofed gate, its lanes are littered with CCTV cameras and Gosine, who would spend most of his time looking over his business was armed with a licensed firearm.

On Monday at 7.15 am, Gosine was at the front of the grocery preparing to open his gate, when he was ambushed by four men dressed in CEPEP uniforms, one of whom brandished a gun. Gosine pulled out his licensed firearm and engaged the bandits, shooting Walker dead while the others ran off. Gosine was shot in his stomach. Investigators were yesterday still viewing CCTV footage of the incident hoping to identify the three suspects who remained at large.