Aug. 8, 2006 – We all think: "it won't happen to me" or "NOT in my neighborhood"…
That's what I thought too, until one night about a year and a half ago.
My wife Janet and I were home and awake; it was 12:30 a.m. The house was well lit. We heard a loud "pop"…and I knew it sounded like a gunshot…but we live in a quiet neighborhood.
Our annual houseguests Peter and Murial (from England/Canada) were staying with us again, they know St Thomas well. They made a big commotion getting into the door and we found our friend Peter sitting facing us with a hole in his shirt and a hole in his body.
Janet called 911, and tried to explain where we live (we all have this deep down fear of explaining where we live during an emergency, don't we?). We realized that the ambulance would never find our house in time to save Peter.
We stood at the door, ready to take Peter to the hospital ourselves, realizing and hesitating for a moment, knowing that we were
unprotected going back out into the dark street where the gunman might still be waiting. We faced our fears and raced Peter to the hospital
and during the long and bumpy ride, we urged him to "stay with us" while he fought for his life.
He was whisked into surgery almost immediately, thanks again so much to the hospital and staff, the surgery lasted hours while we three friends lay on the floor of a waiting room trying to absorb what had happened.
The doctor was wonderful, but chillingly clear that Peter would not have made it had we not gotten him there so quickly.
How do we fix this lack of household identification for emergency services?
Fear stayed with us while Peter was recuperating, and remained well after Peter was back in England (facing a 2nd surgery
that resulted from the gunshot). Janet and I called each other to coordinate our daily return to our own home. We would
meet in the driveway, lock our cars, and run quickly into the house and then lock the door behind us. We had the locks changed, fortified the windows and sliding doors…but we couldn't find a feeling of being safe in our home. Do you remember locking your doors as a child in St Thomas? "I don't."
A cowardly man wearing a ski mask grabbed a purse from an innocent
island guest while her husband watched from the car – following her
with the headlights to make sure she was safe – then ran toward
him and shot him point blank, completely unprovoked. What is so wrong with our society that this can happen? We have so much work to do…
In the last few weeks, 5 men have lost their lives to shootings in the V.I. Nearly 75 people have been shot so far this year. I feel we need to face these problems and bring back the way things used to be…and feel safe and secure in this beautiful place we all call home.
We don't know if the police came to our house that night, as we were at the hospital. They didn't come the next day and after many phone calls to the VIPD in the days following the shooting, the forensics officer arrived at our home. The bullet that was taken from Peter's body was sent to St Croix for examination and no one knows if it made it or not, or what happened? There was no follow-up. I have many friends in the VIPD that tell me how understaffed and under-funded they are and that they are just as frustrated as I am. Friends of mine in the Justice Department have told me, on numerous occasions, about the understaffing in the Prosecuting Attorneys office and the constant pressure to make deals with defendants to clear cases from the docket. The end result is that perpetrators of these crimes, although caught by our police department, get off with little or no punishment.
In the weeks that followed this crime, I made numerous calls to Public Works asking for a streetlight to be installed near our house to replace one lost nine years before in Hurricane Marilyn. I was told that no streetlights were available, and none in the foreseeable future. Four months later, a streetlight was installed near our home. There is no doubt in my mind that this shooting would never have occurred had the criminal not been protected by our dark street.
When will we face what needs to be done in our neighborhoods; like proper lighting, re-activating and completing the "home identification"
program that was started YEARS ago after Hurricane Marilyn? Now with handheld GPS systems for location identification and home identifications completed by the tax assessor's office, we can put this information together and coordinate with Emergency Services Personnel?
It is important that we give full support to the VIPD and the Justice Department to audit crime investigations? Let's not lay blame for what hasn't been done, instead let's take up the challenge and get it done. We need to take every crime against every individual resident or visitor as a crime against our own families. We need to feel what the victims feel and learn that creating a better life for all of us will reward us tenfold in the end. Let's do it.
