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We start in Orange Walk on Friday night, where Indian Belizean Amit Moryani was killed inside his family's store in a robbery which escalated to murder. It all happened because Moryani tried to defend his mother as one of the robbers attacked her. Our news team went north to find out how this law-abiding businessman's life was ended by crime and violence:

Daniel Ortiz reporting
37 year-old Amit Moryani, a businessman from Orange Walk, was fatally injured in a robbery at his family's store P & P Supermarket, on Cemetery Street.

It happened at around 8:50 last Friday night. He was inside the store with his mother, Babita Moryani, nearing the end of business hours when 2 masked men barged in; one of them was armed.

The unarmed man reportedly approached Moryani's mother from behind, and grabbed her purse, which had $300 in cash.

Amit Moryani tried to defend his mother, and that's when the armed gunman fired 2 shots at them. One of them hit Amit in the upper left side of his chest, and the other grazed the right side of his mother's head.

ASP Alejandro Cowo - OC, CIB
"The struggle happened inside the store. The business owner and his mother were inside of the store, when they were 2 male persons who entered the store. A fight ensued between the owner and one of the male persons, and as a result, he ended up being shot, and the mother ended up being injured, likewise."

Amit passed away about an hour later at the Northern Regional Hospital, while he was undergoing treatment.

His family continues to grieve his violent passing, and today, they told us that they were unable to comment at this time. All accounts are that Amit Moryani was a hardworking businessman, and a law-abiding citizen. Arun Hotchandani, the Honorary Consul of India in Belize, told us via telephone that the local Indian community, especially, the Association of Merchants from Northern Belize, also grieves with his family.

H.E. Arun Hotchandani - Honorary Consul of India
"Amit was a young enterprising guy. His family has been here for many many years. A very enterprising family, a very hard working family, and they had a business in the Free Zone, and they have now established, many many years ago, they've established in Orange Walk. These people are, like what you said, very hard working, very enterprising, and they are law abiding citizens. They are people that go absolutely by the law, and they work. He has two beautiful little kids. I think one is 5 and one is 2, and he has a very young family. And he always always used to - when I used to speak to him - even at the recent Diwali function. He would say, 'You know, let's do more for Belize. Let's see what we can do.' He was always Pro-Belize."

Police say that they are looking for 2 persons, who they believe have been on sort of a robbery spree around the Orange Walk District.

ASP Alejandro Cowo - OC, CIB
"The police has already conducted searches of [surveillance] footage in the area to determine who are the two male persons who are involved in the shooting. We suspect, and we have information that they are from the Orange Walk District. If you have noticed from the past, Orange Walk have been targeted in several parts of the District. It was in Carmelita; they moved to the Trial Farm, and now, they are in the center of Orange Walk. They are moving all around in the Orange Walk District, not a specific location exactly, in Orange Walk Town."

The cops say that Chinese business owners were being targeted, and now the criminal element appears to have shifted focus to the Indian merchants.

ASP Alejandro Cowo - OC, CIB
"We believe that this is a random thing. The first ones that were targeted first were Chinese nationals, now it is Indian nationals. So, any business owner that they see vulnerable, it is them who they attack."

Jules Vasquez, reporter
"So you believe it is the same operators from the others."

ASP Alejandro Cowo - OC, CIB
"Yeah, we believe that it is the same persons that are behind the 2 first robberies, that is also behind this one."

But, for Arun Hotchandani, he hopes that Belizeans see this as a situation affecting everyone, not just one group of people at a time.

H.E. Arun Hotchandani
"Crime has hit close to home for our community, and for especially for such a young gentleman like that to have lost his life. It shouldn't be perceived that the Indians are being targeted. It's - I think that anybody is a target. I think that whether you rob from an Indian, whether you rob from a Belizean, or you rob from just the poor man off the street, and someone just steals a chain - it's a robbery, and especially with the way things are going. Yes, we all are concerned. We are very deeply concerned that crime is getting out of hand."

As you heard, police have suspects for this and other armed robberies in and around Orange Walk.

Notably, an Indian-owned Western Union branch in Corozal was also robbed this morning. We'll tell you about that later in this segment.