Ste Madeleine in shock as beloved Chinese restaurant owner murdered

Sascha Wil­son

Se­nior Re­porter

sascha.wil­[email protected]

A Chi­nese restau­rant and bar pro­pri­etor, known for his kind­ness and gen­eros­i­ty, was found bru­tal­ly mur­dered in his busi­ness in Ste Madeleine on Sun­day night, leav­ing the com­mu­ni­ty shocked and sad­dened.

Xhi Li Li, 49, was the own­er of Yue Hua Chi­nese Restau­rant and Bar, lo­cat­ed at the cor­ner of Man­a­ham­bre Road and M2 Ring Road. Po­lice be­lieve the killing oc­curred dur­ing a rob­bery. His body was dis­cov­ered around 11.50 pm af­ter a cus­tomer went to the es­tab­lish­ment to make a pur­chase.

Po­lice said the pro­pri­etor typ­i­cal­ly con­duct­ed late-night sales through a small open­ing in the front door af­ter lock­ing up. How­ev­er, when the cus­tomer looked through the open­ing, he no­ticed a large amount of blood on the restau­rant floor be­hind the counter. Alarmed, the cus­tomer went to the near­by Ste Madeleine Po­lice Sta­tion a short dis­tance away and made a re­port.

Of­fi­cers who re­spond­ed found the front door of the es­tab­lish­ment open. A trail of blood led them be­hind the counter, where Li was found ly­ing in a foetal po­si­tion on the ground. His hands and feet were bound at the wrists and an­kles with duct tape, and there were vis­i­ble in­juries to his head and face. Po­lice be­lieve he may have been beat­en to death with a wood­en ba­ton.

Po­lice seized sev­er­al items at the scene, in­clud­ing a blood-stained blue ban­dana, a roll of grey duct tape with blood, a gold-coloured hoop ear­ring, a DVR and se­cu­ri­ty cam­era, and wet and dry swabs tak­en from a wood­en ba­ton.

The pro­pri­etor, who lived near his busi­ness, was well known in the com­mu­ni­ty and de­scribed by res­i­dents as a kind and gen­er­ous in­di­vid­ual.

He had op­er­at­ed the busi­ness for more than a decade. One res­i­dent said the busi­ness­man had been robbed once be­fore, while an­oth­er could not re­call any pre­vi­ous in­ci­dents at the es­tab­lish­ment.

When Guardian Me­dia vis­it­ed yes­ter­day, the bar was closed, and the land­lord de­clined com­ment.

Res­i­dents al­so de­clined to speak on cam­era, but they ex­pressed sad­ness over his death. One of them, a reg­u­lar cus­tomer at the es­tab­lish­ment, said he was at the bar with friends some­time be­fore 11 pm that fate­ful night.

He claimed there were “strange” men lim­ing at the bar. He on­ly learnt of the own­er’s death yes­ter­day morn­ing. “It’s sad,” the res­i­dent lament­ed, adding that the own­er was gen­er­ous to his cus­tomers and usu­al­ly opened late hours to ac­com­mo­date them.

“Chi­nee is a man who gives any­body any­thing; even if you come with a $10 short, he is a man who as­sist you.”

He felt the Gov­ern­ment should be more ag­gres­sive in its an­ti-crime poli­cies, in­clud­ing the re­sump­tion of hang­ings.

“The Gov­ern­ment not do­ing noth­ing for crime. Them es­ca­lat­ing crime. If they start to hang in the morn­ing, and you get 20 years for a gun, and you are 60 years, you will come out when you are 80.”

He added that the Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress had promised that when they win, every­one would win, but they failed to keep that promise, as “no­body win; peo­ple dy­ing still.” An­oth­er res­i­dent, who said he had known the own­er for more than a decade, men­tioned that the vic­tim’s fam­i­ly—his wife and three chil­dren—still live in his na­tive coun­try.

Last week Mon­day, a Chi­nese na­tion­al was as­sault­ed dur­ing a rob­bery at a Chi­nese-owned busi­ness—RTT Mall Su­per­mar­ket—in Co­coyea Vil­lage, San Fer­nan­do. The 45-year-old vic­tim was at the busi­ness around 8:45 pm with the 78-year-old pro­pri­etress and a fe­male em­ploy­ee who is a Span­ish na­tion­al when three ban­dits wear­ing ski masks stormed in.

One sus­pect jumped over the counter and be­gan plac­ing bot­tles of al­co­hol in­to a JanS­port back­pack, while an­oth­er con­front­ed the male em­ploy­ee. Dur­ing a strug­gle, the em­ploy­ee was struck on the head, right el­bow and left up­per thigh with a bro­ken glass bot­tle. The third sus­pect stole an undis­closed quan­ti­ty of cash from the cash reg­is­ter.

The ban­dits fled in the di­rec­tion of the San Fer­nan­do By­pass Road. The in­jured man, who was bleed­ing pro­fuse­ly, was tak­en to the San Fer­nan­do Gen­er­al Hos­pi­tal, where he was treat­ed for lac­er­a­tions to the scalp, left thigh and right el­bow. Up to last evening, no one had been ar­rest­ed in ei­ther of these in­ci­dents.

Moonasar: No rise in bar rob­beries, but own­ers must stay vig­i­lant

Mean­while, Bar­keep­ers and Op­er­a­tors As­so­ci­a­tion of T&T pres­i­dent Sateesh Moonasar said as far as he was aware there has been no re­port­ed in­crease in rob­beries tar­get­ing bars and restau­rants, but op­er­a­tors are still be­ing urged to re­main vig­i­lant.

“We have not seen an uptick in rob­beries in the restau­rant busi­ness per se, but rob­beries and crime in Trinidad and To­ba­go is a very se­ri­ous thing right now and is some­thing that is sort of out of con­trol. So it is some­thing that we need to take very se­ri­ous­ly. As pro­pri­etors of busi­ness­es, we need to do what we need to do in or­der to se­cure our busi­ness­es in terms of pri­vate se­cu­ri­ty and so forth.”

How­ev­er, he ac­knowl­edged that in re­cent times there has been a slight de­crease in crime. “We ask the rel­e­vant au­thor­i­ties to con­tin­ue to do what they are do­ing and have the crime rate down as much as pos­si­ble.”

Moonasar said he would fre­quent­ly re­mind his mem­bers to en­sure the safe­ty of their staff and cus­tomers.