There is a rising presence of gangs and violence in the Virgin Islands. While Mexico gets much of the press for the violence incurred by the drug cartels, the Caribbean is slowly catching up. 

Around the end of June, there was a daytime shooting at K-Mart. A teenaged man walked up to a group of rivals and opened fire in broad daylight. One man was shot in the head and killed and the other was wounded. The word around the island was that this was in retaliation for a death a few weeks previous when a bullet-riddled man was dumped at the hospital by a group of men who did not identify themselves. He was dead long before his "friends" dragged him through the ER doors. 

The gunman in the K-Mart shooting was found hiding in the bushes behind the mall and arrested by VIPD. At 18, he was on his way to being a convicted murderer and had effectively destroyed his young life, other lives and set in motion further events.

The man killed in the K-Mart parking lot was being buried on Monday in Coki Point. The cemetery is near a beach very popular with tourists and frequented by the safaris, carrying passengers on excursions from the cruise ships. As the funeral was proceeding, a red Honda pulled to the curb and at least one man opened fire on people attending the burial of the previous victim. Again, this was a shooting in broad daylight. As gunfire ripped across the street, a safari with cruise ship passengers was heading for the beach. A 14-year-old girl riding in that safari was struck in the chest by a bullet and another passenger injured. The girl was transported to the hospital where she died of her injuries. Her family was on the cruise ship Carnival Victory and it was reported that they were flown back to Puerto Rico. Words cannot describe the horror for them.

Tuesday, it was abnormally hot and humid and the air was filled with an oppressive tension. Daylight shootings were not the normal thing here and we just had two in a couple of weeks. Typically, death on St. Thomas occurs in the dark and on some less traveled road. Rarely are the tourists victims of anything more than rudeness. St. Thomas relies heavily on the tourists who come here from the cruise ships and there are frequent advertisements in the newspaper reminding the locals to be nice to the tourists. Do we have to run ads to now remind the locals not to shoot the tourists, too?

My son is 14. I couldn't imagine taking a vacation with him and losing him over someone else's turf battle or wounded sense of "respect". Sometimes I wonder if the gangbangers here even understand the word respect. I think they confuse it with the word "fear" since it is fear and not respect that they are wishing to cause by murdering people in front of others.

The owner of the red Honda turned himself in late yesterday night. But he did not act alone and the problem here is far from over. Many children here grow up without opportunity to do better and find acceptance and opportunity within the structure of gang life. The public school system does a poor job of passing on any useful skills to the students. They are ill-prepared for life, much less college or trade school. Poverty is overwhelming here. 

We are well on our way to having 50 murders here in the Virgin Islands this year. With a population of not much over 110,000 people between three islands, that makes the USVI worse than any mainland city's murder rate. Most of the murders are gang related, as in, somebody had earned it. There was a shooting outside of a cockfighting bar recently where the word was that the deceased pretty much had it coming considering the activities they had involved themselves in, owing people money. The common theme here is retaliation. The victims and perpetrators know each other. But in the escalating battle over turf and who is going to fear who, the bloodshed is occurring more often in very public and sunlit places. And that is when murder is no longer a dark and secret act, but a painful and horrible thing that takes along the innocent. 

The beach by Coki Point is not the most upstanding place. I would rate it as one of the scariest beaches here, yet the safaris and cruise lines continue to shuttle unwitting passengers to that end of town. The snorkeling is fabulous but if you really just want to catch a contact high or witness shady activity, it's the place for you. I ride by the intersection every morning on the way to work and by 7:30 a.m., people have already taken up their positions under the shop awnings, cussing, drinking and smoking weed. It's paradise in the third world. But if we are so reliant on tourism, the government here needs to protect not just the tourists, but all citizens, and not allow such a popular excursion destination to be a powder keg of illicit activity. The fact that the international media picked up on the story was an embarrassment to the VI Department of Tourism. The funny thing in the USVI is that without outside scrutiny, things are very slow to change, if at all. The USVI needs to face the gang problem and do more than offer platitudes after the murder has occurred or we face becoming the new Caribbean Mexico where everyone will soon live in fear of what the drug trade and gang wars can do to us.