Keith Branker, 32, a Sobo Village, La Brea resident who worked for the Siparia City Corporation, was killed by two masked gunmen dressed in police colours, according to a witness.
The witness, a co-worker who asked to not be named, told Newsday around 8.15 am Branker was at work on Silver Stream Road, Aripero, on the first day of a drainage project when he was ambushed.
The co-worker said two men, dressed in police colours and black T-shirts wrapped around their heads, came out of the bushes. The gunmen approached Branker while he was taking a break from digging a drain in front of a house under construction.
"I just see two men with two rust-colour-looking gun and with that, we was like ‘Police, boy?’ We don't know. It looking weird.
“When you watch their head is tie-up jersey thing and that (is) what make me say, ‘Nah, boy, (it) is something else…’
“With that – bang! The first shot and he (Branker) take off on the side (of the house).”
"They fire about one or two here and they (the workers) take off with a speed, run in the house, run back out, run on the side…That man real run for he life. I being real with you, I swear he get away cause I see the gunmen them leaving through the back."
After the assailants fled, the witness said he and the foreman looked for Branker but on finding him at the back of the house, realised he had been shot.
"As I reach round the house, I say ‘Boy, you good?’ He was still alive. (I asked) ‘Dawg, yuh good or what?’ But you done know, is headshot."
"It had a junk of blood on he eye. He was just gasping, gasping a little bit with a little small froth (around his mouth)."
The witness said if the men did not look like the police, they would have known sooner that something was wrong.
"We was taking off one time cause we know that men in that kind of clothes is gunmen. The way they come, long pants, jersey, looking like they matching, nah."
Relating the incident to onlookers, the witness said he recalled Branker saying, ‘What I do allyuh, boy?’ during the ordeal.
Neighbours, who wished to remain anonymous, told Newsday they heard the loud explosions and ran for cover. They said they are now afraid as this is the second murder to occur in the quiet street in around five years. The first, they said, was a villager they only knew as Stone, who was killed up the street from where Branker was killed.
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