Factory worker shot dead on dinner run
What was supposed to be a quick trip to grab a bite at a Sri Lankan restaurant ended in tragedy when Sureshkumar Kanagaratnam was gunned down just steps from his destination.
Kanagaratnam, 28, told his mother Tuesday night he was just going out for five minutes with a friend and would be back shortly.
Within the hour, he lay dead from gunshot wounds to the chest at Yorkwoods Shopping Plaza on Jane St., south of Finch Ave. W. “Maybe (there was) an argument. Maybe he said the wrong thing to someone. Police don’t know why ( he was killed),” Kanagaratnam’s older brother said as friends and relatives gathered at the family’s North York apartment last night.
“ He was a hard- working guy. Fourteen hours a day and he just bought a new house,” brother Kuselakumar Kanagaratnam said, sobbing. The victim came to Canada from Sri Lanka with family members when he was 14. After learning a trade in school, he worked as a tool and die maker at a York Region manufacturing plant for the past seven years.
“ He came to this country for a better, safer life. He was so good and he looked after my 82- year- old father and our mother. My mother can’t stop crying,” the brother added. A friend of the victim, an older, married man with children who lives in the same building, has not been heard from since the shooting.
Kanagaratnam, who celebrated his 28th birthday on Sept. 3, is the youngest of two brothers and a sister. He will likely be cremated following a Bhuddist ceremony at DeMarco Funeral Home on Keele St. in North York Saturday.