A 19-year-old man was shot and killed early Sunday in Christiansted and another man seriously wounded.
Miguel Crispin was murdered at approximately 1 a.m. after a confrontation among several men escalated out of control, according to Police Chief Novelle Francis. Crispin, of Louis Brown Villas, died after being shot in the left shoulder. Leonard Rodriques, 21, was wounded in the chest and stomach.
Police said Crispin and Rodriques, accompanied by a third man, pulled up behind a car parked near the National Park Service construction site in downtown Christiansted when an argument ensued with the car’s occupants. Francis said the argument then turned into a fight, with the antagonists using construction materials to assault each other.
At that point one of the combatants, as yet unidentified, retrieved a gun from a parked car and began firing, killing Crispin and wounding Rodriques.
Police responded to calls of shots fired and arrested three men, Francis said. The men were released pending further investigation.
The two shooting victims were taken to Gov. Juan F. Luis Hospital, where Crispin was pronounced dead. Rodriques underwent emergency surgery to remove bullet fragments from his chest and stomach.
Crispin’s murder capped off a week of violence throughout the territory that left four people dead. On Sunday afternoon a police officer shot and killed an armed man on the Red Hook dock. According to police, the officer repeatedly ordered the man to drop a handgun he was brandishing. When the man refused and instead raised the weapon, the officer fired several shots. The man fell inside a tourist information booth.
Police investigators recovered at least eight spent shell casings from the scene of the shooting. The man, who has not yet been identified, was rushed to the Roy Lester Schneider Hospital, where he was pronounced dead at 1:45 p.m.
The officer has been placed on paid administrative leave pending the outcome of an internal police investigation.
The Red Hook shooting was the second on St. Thomas in a matter of hours over the weekend. Police are also investigating a shooting that killed a young man early Sunday morning at a birthday party. The unidentified man, who was in his late teens or early 20s, was shot two times in the torso, according to police.
Last Thursday night, meanwhile, a man was found stabbed to death in the Bolongo area. The man, whose identification is being withheld pending notification of relatives, had been stabbed several times in the stomach, and a wound on his left hand indicated he may have been trying to defend himself, police said.
The killings bring the territory’s murder total to 22 this year. Police have asked anyone with information concerning the deaths to call 774-2196 or 774-4050 on St. Thomas or 778-2211 on St. Croix, or to call 911.
