Daughter of slain Chaguanas businessman: 'Daddy, you were stolen from me'

HAILEY Dindial, 13, expressed sadness and anger towards the people who killed her father Darryl, 52. She did so during a funeral service for him at his auto supplies store in Montrose on Saturday. Dindial was murdered by gunmen at that same location on May 5, around 7 pm, just after closing the store.

When he was killed, Dindial was on a video call to Hailey and her brother Ayden, nine.

The police believe the men wanted to steal cash and other items from the business. But Dindial had already locked the doors. The killers escaped with an undisclosed amount of money that Dindial had with him.

Hailey told the gathering of relatives, employees and other people from the community, that she never thought that day would be the last time she saw her father alive. "They stole you away from me."

But she urged those present not to mourn her father's death. "We are not here to mourn but to celebrate the life of my father." Hailey said Dindial was kind-hearted and generous to everyone he met. She also remembered him as someone full of humour and who never missed an opportunity to tease.

Hailey said Dindial nicknamed her "picker picker", after she complained to him about how he often teased her. She told a story where he mistook the alarm on her cell phone for a phone call and told her that some boys had called for her. "I will always love you dad."

Under the guidance of the officiating pundit, Ayden began to perform final rites on Dindial. Hailey and their mother Veena joined him. Veena ran the fingers of her right hand through her husband's hair. With Hailey and Ayden standing on either side of her, before Dindial was taken to Waterloo to be cremated, Veena kissed him on on his left cheek and lay her head briefly on the left side of his chest.

Nephew Rishi Dindial said Darryl or "Uncle David" as he was often called, was a special person. "He made our lives richer and fuller." Rishi remembered Dindial for having a great sense of humour. He also remembered him as a devoted father to Hailey and Ayden. "They were his inspiration."

To the community, Rishi said Dindial was a good and generous businessman.

The pundit recalled being a beneficiary of Dindial's kindness, when his car's battery died and Dindial personally replaced it for free. He described Dindial's death at 52, and the circumstances under which he died, as a tragedy.

While people are right to ask what the police and even the government were doing to curb crime in TT, the pundit had another view. "As a people, are we not guilty of not doing our duty?"

That duty being to live an honest life as individuals and collectively as a society. He said crime is not a problem that the security forces or anyone else in authority can solve on their own.

"We all have to do our part. We have to lift society."

He reminded the gathering that all they have is the ability to shape what today is and what tomorrow can be. "Yesterday is gone."