Instead of celebrating her birthday, a Malick family is in mourning after one of their relatives was gunned down at her Barataria businessplace on Wednesday afternoon.

Police said Roxanne Reyes, 45, was in the carpark of the bar she ran on the Eastern Main Road, Barataria, near Sixth Avenue, at around 1.45 pm when a man wearing coveralls and a blue fisherman's hat walked up to her and shot her several times.

A 29-year-old man who was standing near her was also shot.

Passers-by heard the gunshots and called the police.

A team from the North Eastern Division Task Force and the San Juan CID took Reyes and the wounded man to the hospital.

Reyes was declared dead on arrival. The man remained warded up to Wednesday afternoon.

Newsday visited and spoke with a relative, who said she worked at the bar and was standing near Reyes when the shooting happened.

The relative said she was still shaken by the incident and believes she would also have been killed if she had not happened to walk away at the last minute.

"I was right there and I almost got shot, so I'm traumatised. If I didn't walk off I would have gotten caught as well.

"My face began to burn – that's how I realised how close the gunshots were.

"I thought they were shooting somewhere up the road, because they normally do that, but when I came back out I saw my relative and the man on the ground."

The woman said her last conversation with Reyes was to ask for an advance on her salary. Reyes promised she would talk to her about it later that day.

She said the family was heartbroken, as they were making preparations for a lime for Reyes' 46th birthday on Thursday.

Reyes was the mother of a 25-year-old daughter and a 13-year-old boy.

The relative said Reyes was never threatened and could not think why anyone would want her killed.

Police from the Homicide Bureau of Investigations Region II are continuing enquiries.

This story has been updated to include additional details. It was originally published with the headline Woman killed, man wounded in Barataria shooting. Read original below:

Police were at the scene of a shooting in Barataria where a woman was killed and a man was wounded on Wednesday afternoon.

Police said officers of the North Eastern Division Task Force were called to a bar near Agard's Nut House, on the Eastern Main Road, sometime after 2 pm after gunshots were heard in the area.

They found a man and woman bleeding from gunshot wounds. They took them to hospital, where the woman was declared dead.

Investigators believe the two were the owners of the bar.

More as this becomes available.