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A 56-year-old man who was working on an after-hours remodeling project at a Culver’s restaurant on the South Side died early Tuesday morning of an apparent heart attack after two armed men robbed the restaurant and prevented the man’s co-workers from seeking help, Madison police said.

“There was a certain vileness, a certain despicability about the whole thing because ... you had an instance where the victim was scared to the point of death,” Police Chief Mike Koval said.

The man, whose name has not been released, is Madison’s sixth homicide victim of 2016. The Dane County Medical Examiner’s Office was conducting an autopsy Tuesday afternoon to determine the cause of death.

The two armed and masked men entered the back of the restaurant around 3 a.m. and surprised four contractors who were working inside the restaurant at 2102 W. Beltline, Koval said. For about an hour, one of the men looked for and then opened the restaurant’s safe, taking the money while the other man kept a gun pointed at the victims, who were ordered to lie face down on the floor.