By *Guevara Leacock
On A View from the Outside this week, we turn our attention to the killing of a third business owner in the Arnos Vale area, with the view being that violent crime is still out of control in St. Vincent and the Grenadines (SVG) and we need to focus on catching the perpetrators.
At about a quarter to three on the morning of Saturday, Sept.13th, Peter Minors, a 48-year-old businessman, was shot several times at his home in Arnos Vale. He was taken to the Milton Cato Memorial Hospital and he died there. The police said what the police always say: that investigations are continuing and that anyone with information should come forward regardless of how insignificant it may seem. His was the 32nd homicide in SVG for 2026.
The part of this story that should concern every Vincentian is that Mr. Minors is the third person running a business within a few hundred yards of the sporting complex at Arnos Vale to be shot dead since April 2023.
In April 2023, the vendor Jomo Brudy, known to everyone as Top Dog, was shot in Pole Yard and died in hospital. In October 2024, Marilyn John, known as Maro, who ran a business near the supermarket at the sporting complex gap, was shot in her vehicle at about half past nine at night in Paul Over, and three months before that a gunman had killed her son in Pole Yard, so that one family buried two people in four months. In none of those three killings has any charge ever been reported.
Are these killings connected to one another, or are they three separate tragedies that happen to have occurred in the same area? No one in SVG seems to have the answer. While the police are not expected to publish intelligence about crime-fighting, they can offer information on lines of inquiry or patterns of crime in a particular area. In the case of Arnos Vale, there is no record of anything being said by the police. In the absence of anything official, Vincentians living in Arnos Vale are left to worry and work out the details for themselves, which in practice means rumour.
Many may not take this issue seriously given that Vincentians only ever seem to be interested in partisan politics of late, but it is a serious matter. Three people who ran small businesses within walking distance of each another have been shot dead in three and a half years. Either that is a coincidence, in which case somebody should say so, or it is not, in which case somebody should say that instead.
There are more questions which need to be answered. How often does a killing in SVG end with somebody on trial in the criminal courts? The answer is in the police force’s own records. Across 12 years from 2012 to 2023, there were 450 homicides in SVG and only 156 of them were solved.
That is about 35%, or roughly seven out of every 20 homicides. Recently the situation has been getting worse rather than better. In 2022, the rate was around 21% or nine cases out of 42. In 2023, it was around 23% or 12 out of 52. Gun killings make up the majority of these statistics. Gun killings are eating away at the soul of the nation of SVG.
Pay close attention. On the records available to the Vincentian public, roughly two out of every three people who kill somebody in SVG are never charged. Not acquitted. Not tried and released. Never charged.
That is the real crime problem, and Vincentians are not talking about it enough. Crime has literally become a nine-day talk amongst ordinary Vincentians. It is so pervasive now that it seems the ordinary Vincentian man and woman have become immune to crime and crime reports.
Every year Vincentians count up the figures for year past and compare it with the year before. Fifty-four in 2024, 40 in 2025, 32 so far this year. Politicians and political parties then take turns blaming each other for the problem but what are they seriously doing about it?
Let it be clear that we on a View from the Outside are not engaging in smooth talk to undermine any government, politician, police force or political party but the powers that be should know, if they don’t already, that a person who has gotten away with serious crime once has been given every reason to do it again. We are simply raising issues that every Vincentian should be concerned about. Some may choose to listen and act others may not but a word to the wise is sufficient.
Let us go back to Pole Yard after Top Dog was killed in 2023. The residents did not ask for more police patrols and they certainly did not ask for tougher sentences. They asked for street lights. One of them put it as plainly as it can be put, that if you give them light so they can see the gunman, then they can tell the police who the gunman is. They pointed out that the lights had come on readily enough for a political party rally but not for them to live their everyday lives and feel protected.
The community of Pole Yard had already buried people in 2019, 2020 and in 2022. They were begging for electricity, and they were begging for it because they understood something that has apparently escaped both political parties in SVG, which is that you cannot be a witness to something you could not see.
As simple a point as that may seem, it is a valid and serious one to raise. In fact, in doing research for this week’s View from the Outside, a Vincentian said to us in reference to Pole Yard, “strangely enough you don’t hear anything about inside there at all, lately”. Elections are over, the votes have been counted and it seems that Pole Yard and its residents have been forgotten again until 2030.
Gun crime of the kind we are talking about is not something any small island government invents or can simply switch off. The guns and the ammunition are also not made in SVG, so where they originate from is a serious question to be asked and considered.
Crime detection under the Unity Labour Party (ULP) government was bad, based on the available figures. The reported 21% in 2022 and 23% in 2023 happened on their watch. At the end of more than 20 years in office, with a police force they claimed to have reenergised and reorganised. Do you remember how they promised to be “tough on crime and the causes of crime”? Vincentians are still waiting for that.
In fact, never has there been a government in SVG so soft on crime as the ULP. But time will tell. The people of Pole Yard were asking the ULP government for street lights in 2023 and they are still asking now that they have left office because nothing was done. So when the ULP leadership talks about crime now, Vincentians are entitled to ask what exactly was being done about it for 24 years. You know the answer.
The New Democratic Party (NDP) government is 10 months in office. In fairness to them, 10 months is not long, and there are signs of seriousness. Sixteen auxiliary police recruits have started training with the Special Service Unit. The acting Commissioner of Police and his deputy called the force together on Aug. 25 and set out four priorities, which are: more visible policing, greater respect for the public, stronger support for officers, and closer cooperation across law enforcement. No one could quarrel with any of that. The difficulty is that not one of those four priorities carries a number, a target or a date or has been properly explained to the public. We on A View from the Outside ask: Where is the comprehensive plan to fight crime in SVG?
The government should publish the homicide detection rate every single year, in the same breath as the homicide count. That is what actually matters to Vincentians. We want to see what is actually being done to solve crime, especially gun crimes, in SVG. The government should reevaluate and improve the witness protection and witness anonymity system in SVG, because in a small country telling the police what they saw can cost a person their life. The government should make it their priority to light the places that have been asking to be lit, so that Vincentians can feel safe in their communities.
So in the coming days, when someone tells you that crime is out of control in SVG, do not argue with them about the number. Ask them a different question. Ask them how many of those killings ended with someone being charged. Ask them who was charged for Top Dog in 2023, or for Maro in 2024, or for Peter Minors a fortnight ago. Three people who got up every morning and opened a business in Arnos Vale are dead, and their families have been given no answer at all. Until that changes, the annual argument about the homicide rate is just noise.
*Guevara Leacock is a barrister at law of Lincoln’s Inn in England and an attorney at law in St. Vincent and the Grenadines. He has a keen interest in history and politics and is a social commentator.
The opinions presented in this content belong to the author and may not necessarily reflect the perspectives or editorial stance of iWitness News. Opinion pieces can be submitted to [email protected].