REINOFER Hughes got a second lease on life when he won the battle against prostate cancer two months ago.

However, two cutlass-wielding thieves cut short Hughes’s renewed life at his Lopinot home on Thursday night. He was killed from a chop to the neck and stomach while trying to protect his wife’s livelihood.

Police reports are that Hughes, 57, was killed by two men posing as customers of his shop-JB’s-around 8.50 p.m. The shop is at the side of Hughes’s Dunderhill Road, Lopinot, home, just off the relatively busy, well-lit road going into Lopinot.

The cutlass attack occurred ten minutes before the couple usually closed the shop.

Although Hughes worked as a Paragon security officer, his 44-year-old widow, Joanne, who operated the small shop, described him as ’the backbone of the business’.

Speaking at the home yesterday, Joanne Hughes said now she ’does not want to have no part of the shop no more’.

It is her only means of income.

Recounting the incident which claimed her husband’s life, Joanne Hughes said she was inside the house when tragedy struck.

She said she ran to the parlour when she heard someone shout: ’This is a hold-up!’

She said she believes the bandits thought her husband was home alone at the time.

The couple, who were supposed to celebrate ten years of marriage this year, lived in the house by themselves.

Joanne Hughes said when she saw her husband struggling with the assailants, she screamed out and the bandits ran off.

Hughes said her husband attempted to run behind the duo. She did not realise he was injured during the melee.

One of the neighbours, who came running when the alarm was raised, later saw Hughes face-down on the vinyl in the gallery. He died on the very spot where ’he born and grow’, a tearful Hughes said.

When Hughes went to close the shop, she realised close to $1,000 was missing from the cash register.

She could not go to the Forensic Science Centre in Federation Park to witness the autopsy performed on her husband yesterday. His youngest brother, Emra Hughes, went instead.

Hughes’s killing took the toll for the year to 144.

Acting Inspector Ramdeen and Constable Ramoutar from the Homicide Bureau are continuing investigations.