Along with the shooting in the air on New Year’s Eve that the community has come to expect, this year gun-toting criminals also shot at each other and cars, according to one unofficial source.
A police officer and his wife were among those whose car was shot at after leaving a restaurant on the Waterfront, the source said. And worshipers leaving the Methodist Church on Market Square shortly after midnight services were met with a shoot-out between two men. The 911 Police blotter reported illegal discharge of a firearm in the area at 12:18 a.m.
Security expert LaVelle Campbell, who has for many years spent the last night of the year documenting the brazen acts of gun play that ruin New Year’s eve for many in the community, said this year was worse than previous ones.
“The lives of youngsters and oldsters,” he said, “were put in danger.”
Meanwhile, most, if not all, the neighborhoods surrounding Charlotte Amalie were showered with shots well into the early morning hours.
“Frenchtown, Savan, ’round the field,” none escaped the hours-long barrage, Campbell said.
One person who lives in the hills of Savan said she and her husband were kept awake by the shots that she thought would never stop.
A Frenchtown resident agreed it was the worst year yet for the amount of gunfire.
The random gunfire went on until 2:15 a.m., according to Campbell.
Earlier in the evening, cars on Solberg hill were covered with cardboard in an effort to prevent the falling bullets from breaking their windshields, and Facebook was alive Thursday morning with photos of where some of the bullets landed.
It’s an annual event that, while frightening, has come to be accepted on some level. One Facebook picture showed three smiling people with metal pots on their heads banging in the New Year.
Shooting at each other at midnight. Shooting at cars being driven by innocent people. The police are not in control. The new wild west is the US Virgin Islands. When you decided to take your children out of the church, build a small house in the back of your house so your kids could reside there indefinitely (no need to make something of themselves), and shower them with super violent electronic games, you should have expected this. Playing these games for hours on end has become their religion. Religion is not what you preach, it is what you practice; and they are getting a lot of practice at their religion. You created monsters and violent freaks. Most of them look like ugly freaks or mugly (since they are part monster). Super skinny, skin tight pants, baggy t-shirts, dreads thicker than their limbs, teeth yellow, eyes red, contentious by nature, and ready to shoot. Looking like ET with dreads.
Well, what do you expect? We have HAD such piss poor leadership over the last umteen years, we have most parents who are either scared to death of their children, or just do not care at all. Either way, it is obvious the federal consent decree on the VIPD is having little to no effect on building a decent “respectable” police force.
It is also flagrantly obvious that the 3 islands have been taken over by the gangs and children who always seem to be innocent little angels with such a bright future, because they do so well in school (must be the ONLY one doing well in VI schools), and they always mind their mama (NOT), and where’s their daddy anyway? Making more felons? Most probably true.
I have never seen such an out of control place where the police and seemingly all local law enforcement are involved, lazy or as most are – just plain wutless!
Thugs and punks run (ruin) run this place. We can only hope and pray that Ken and Soraya are able to turn this place around. I mean even little itsy bitsy Anguilla is eating our lunch, as are all of the islands these days. Why, because those other islands have a lot to EARN, on the backs of the previous generations of Virgin Islanders did to develop tourism in the Caribbean, before handing it off to some third-World island.
It is our own fault, and seemingly, nobody gives a shet!