A 73 year-old Negril businessman, Astley Bandoo, was gunned down during a daring daytime robbery attempt at the Rutland Point Craft Market in Hanover shortly before noon yesterday.

Bandoo, who is in the cambio business, was on one of his trips to the craft market where he purchases foreign currency from the vendors when two men confronted him. They held him at gunpoint and demanded the bag of money he was carrying. A struggle reportedly ensued and Bandoo was shot twice in the face. He died on the spot.

The men made a hasty escape in a waiting gray Nissan Sunny motor car, but without the bag that they had attempted to wrestle from him.

A grief-stricken Jonathan Bandoo, the third of the slain businessman’s 12 children, was overwrought.

“He was the world’s best father; the kind of person he is, he doesn’t deserve that,” Jonathan said.

According to Jonathan, Bandoo had been an excellent father and it had been gut wrenching to see him lying on the ground in a pool of blood.

The cambio dealer’s death has sent shock waves through the 46-craft vendor Rutland Point facility. To many there, Bandoo was a father figure and the craft village was converted into a site of grief and mourning.

And mixed in with those emotions is fear for their own safety.

According to president of the Rutland Point Craft Vendors Association, Monica Whyte-Moncreiff, they will be lobbying for security at the market.

“We need security right now and we will be doing everything in our power to get it,” she said.

“Me feel bad, bad, bad,” added another vendor. “Look how dem come kill the man right before the people dem shop. Anyone a we it coulda happen to. Mr Bandoo just come dung deh so and change six dollar (US) wid me and den dem kill the man.”