Gun Violence: St. Lucia’s Recurring Nightmare!

Word traveled as fast as the bullets that had torn apart Adolphus ‘Bonnie’ Clarke while he sat behind the wheel of his customized Mercedes Benz. He had perished by the sword he’d lived by for most of his 50-something years. As famous for his flamboyant lifestyle as for how he came by his flaunted wealth, Bonnie had only minutes earlier been inquiring at a Bois d’Orange auto repair shop about a particularly expensive brand of tires.

By popular account he was waiting to exit the dirt road near the tire shop and get on the main highway, arguably the island’s busiest, when two masked gunmen suddenly materialized. They fired several rounds at close range through the windshield of Bonnie’s luxury ride, and then, even as his lifeblood flowed from under the door on the driver’s side, casually made off in an unremarkable white car.

The year was 1997. The month, July. Barely 90 days earlier, Kenny Anthony’s Labour Party had been elected to parliament with a 16-1 majority. Throughout his campaign for office the party leader’s main concern had been crime. And not without cause. In the months leading up to the general elections there had been several bank robberies, muggings, rapes, and gang-related shootouts in various parts of the capital. Countless shoppers in William Peter Boulevard were roughly relieved of gold necklaces, wrist watches and other valuables. Some of the island’s more popular tourist sites had been turned into no-go zones. Even the customs warehouse, a ten-minute walk from the island’s main police station, had been broken into and confiscated barrels of contraband retrieved. The campaigning opposition party had pledged, if elected, to put an end to all of that.

Two weeks or so after the Bois d’Orange shooting, the casualty was interred at Choc Cemetery with all the pomp and ceremony normally reserved for departed popular politicians and other local celebrities. At least one prominent underworld figure was unexpectedly among the fearsome mourners, more than a few decked out in colorful 3-piece suits, broad-brimmed black hats and the darkest Ray-Bans.

There was also a heavy plain-clothes police presence.  Superintendent Ausbert Regis later confirmed, contrary to rumor, that Bonnie had not died at the roadside. An associate had transported him to Victoria Hospital where soon after arrival he drew his final breath.  

The officer added that he and his team were on the hunt for leads but without success. Alleged witnesses to the shooting could not be accessed. He acknowledged “this was a bold and horrendous crime and regardless of Bonnie’s reputation the public should in any way possible assist the police in their investigations. We can’t let the killers get away with this. We must look beyond the character of the victim. The highway was not deserted, someone had to have seen something. The getaway car’s license number, for instance.”

From usually reliable official sources, I learned of the police concern about possible reprisals. Also, about “friction among Bonnie’s entourage over who should take control of his assets and holdings.” Especially discombobulating for the cops were the persistent reports, never confirmed, that four members of a Colombian drug cartel were spotted at Pigeon Island just days before Bonnie was returned to his maker. Several days following his funeral, nine brand-new vehicles in the Sunset Motors compound were peppered with bullets by person or persons unknown. Was there a connection with the Bonnie assassination?

The police had little to say that amounted to much. On the occasion it was commissioner Brian Barnard who said the obvious: “This is a malicious act. Most likely, more than one individual was involved. I have my own suspicions.” As with the earlier shooting, no related arrests were ever made!

We were barely into the first week of August when the naked body of 13-year-old Trisha Dennis was discovered in Morne DuDon, several miles from her Balata home. The child’s aunt had reported her missing earlier in the day, to disappointing police interest. The incident brought to mind the 1994 brutal rape-murder of 21-year-old Valerie Lorde only yards from her family home in Monchy, and the related trial that had triggered the formation of a short-lived protest group that unforgettably named itself “Cryers for Justice.”

Many recalled a similar outcry and short-term outrage following the 1989 decapitation of Mary Rackliffe by her live-in lover after she reported to the police that he had raped her 10-year-old daughter—because “he needed her virgin blood” for a demonic ritual. Despite several reported sightings over the years, Rackliffe’s killer was never apprehended. 

In October of 1997, police superintendent Regis updated the media on the result of a gun amnesty initiated by Kenny Anthony six months after taking office. A master of diplomacy, Regis reported that “a number of small caliber firearms” had been surrendered to members of the clergy, for delivery to the police. There had also been “some information from the public that we acted upon.”

It remains conjectural whether the surrendered firearms were ever tested for possible connection with unresolved homicides. Or whether those who placed their illegal firearms in the blessed hands of God’s trusted local agents also supplied personal details. Several days after Regis’ meeting with the media, the minister in charge of the nation’s security convened his own press conference.  

A former magistrate, Velon John was not nearly as careful as had been the police superintendent. “In terms of our expectations of the surrendering of firearms,” he groaned, “we anticipated a deluge of guns being brought in for disposal. That has not been the case.” Only 33 were surrendered, “mainly of the home-made variety.” As for ammunition, just over 2,000 bullets of undetermined vintage were handed over.

At the minister’s side as he spoke was poker-faced police commissioner Francis Nelson. He also had words to unload.   Now that the amnesty period was over, he promised, “we shall be undertaking an aggressive pursuit of persons with illegal firearms in their possession!” He imprinted on the mind of at least one member of his audience the image of a cart before an ass!  

I was at my desk working on a story for the March 7, 1998 edition of the STAR when I was interrupted by a phone call. I had barely said hello when an unfamiliar agitated female voice in my ear delivered in local patois the latest bad news: “Rick, you hear what happen? Dey shoot Gaboo and leave him dere bleeding in de road like ah ole dog. You think dey could do de man dat? Ahwahwee!”

By “Gaboo” the caller referred to Michael Alexander. Since relocating to Saint Lucia from California in 1987, I had   interviewed him countless times, always off the record, often enough for us to have developed a trust-based relationship. He was responsible for several of my more sensational scoops, often involving criminals, some in police uniform, and bent politicians. He was 24 years old when he first got into trouble with the law, following a bloody fracas that landed a barely alive individual at Victoria Hospital. Considering the severity of his several machete wounds, it was a miracle he survived. Indeed, the Miami surgeons who later attended to him all agreed that but for the initial treatment received at Victoria Hospital it would’ve been pointless transferring the patient.

The word on the ground was that the machete incident at Ti Morne was drug-related, that it was in retaliation for a surprise attack in the wee hours of the morning at Gaboo’s favorite after-hours eatery on Chaussee Road. Gaboo had suffered several bullet wounds to his leg, mostly superficial.   As so often is the case in such matters, at the center of the Chaussee Road episode was a woman. By popular consensus, Gaboo’s main squeeze. On paper, however, she was manager of his car rental company. The man from Ti Morne had reportedly made some unwelcome moves on her while the boss was off-island. On learning upon his return about what had transpired in his absence, Gaboo determined someone needed to be taught a lesson about respect for other people’s property. He was accompanied by four “employees” when he called at a particular Ti Morne address in the early morning hours of March 11. They quickly overpowered the sleeping Ti Morne resident’s dozy bodyguard, then transported their target to Pigeon Point in the trunk of Gaboo’s car. The night’s lesson delivered, Gaboo and his crew dumped the unconscious and bloody reluctant student outside Victoria Hospital’s emergency room.

Later that day, with the cooperation of their lawyer, I photographed a surprisingly cheerful Gaboo and his accused accomplices at police headquarters. I also covered their jury trial before Justice Suzie d’Auvergne. There had never been one quite like it. And not since. Special police personnel in camouflage greens, all armed with heavy U.S. Army artillery, stood guard inside and outside the courthouse. The day before the jury delivered its guilty verdict the judge revoked the defendants’ bail, on the basis she wanted to play it safe. For several months Gaboo and his fellow accused had been free on bond, without incident. Only the dumbest citizens would’ve been surprised when an appeal court later freed the group on the ground that the judge had failed to direct the jury on several provisions and concepts of law, “save for the one of least assistance to the appellants.” Alas, by then the group had already served four or five years behind bars. In my final report on the trial, I noted that at the same time scores of jubilant Saint Lucians were gathered in then Columbus Square to honor the latest Nobel winner for Literature, Derek Walcott, the constitutional rights of another son of the soil were being trampled underfoot by the very persons who had sworn always to dispense justice though the heavens fall.

I also took away from the trial the following declaration to the judge and jury by a deadpan Gaboo: “I keep hearing myself referred to as a drug baron. I want everyone to know that in all my life I have never been charged with a drug offense.” The reaction in the gallery was a deafening silence, for indeed there could not have been a single body in the packed courtroom not convinced that Gaboo was the island’s drug kingpin, that he had ordered the Bonnie rub-out, that the chopping incident was drug-related. At least one prominent politician had publicly delivered that verdict in advance of the trial.

For a time it seemed Gaboo had turned a new leaf to concentrate on his various businesses, well away from the spotlight. But others had other plans. Gaboo was taking his usual exercise-bike ride along the Balata road on the earlier recalled afternoon when two males jumped out of the roadside bush, put two bullets in his head, then vanished.

Prime Minister Kenny Anthony had had enough. Some three days following Gaboo’s death he delivered a televised address to the nation, wherein he recalled several firearms-related incidents including a daylight robbery at Soufriere’s Jalousie Hotel, the unresolved matter of Adolphus Bonnie Clarke, and of course the latest suspected assassination.

Said the prime minister: “Commencing today, and continuing until it has obtained its operational objectives, the police will undertake a firm and sustained operation to secure our streets and rid our communities of this distasteful behavior. Operation Restore Peace will use all lawful means to bring an end to the type of criminal actions we witnessed last week. The criminals may have started the war, but we will finish it.”

Then there was this: “When the gangs began flourishing, and the Chaussee Road shootings began, shootings that are immortalized in the 1996 calypso Boom Bye-Bye, the response was tepid and largely ineffective. The police were weak, indecisive and allegedly compromised.” Over the next several years, Kenny Anthony would repeat the last mentioned allegation, to any reporter he encountered, whether on home ground or abroad. 

Saint Lucians continue to live in fear of bolder-than-bold criminals armed with sophisticated high-powered automatic weapons, with little concern for the island’s police. Vieux Fort is fast becoming a no-go zone. At the conclusion of a March 10 church-funeral ceremony, gunmen opened fire on exiting mourners, including the area’s MP Kenny Anthony. A 22-year-old man was fatally hit, three others seriously wounded. Another victim of suspected gang warfare was shot on May 30. Jesus was his name. Jesus Blanchard.

Perhaps the most recent casualties were on his mind when Kenny Anthony acknowledged in parliament that while his own and other administrations had done all in their power to bring crime under control, gun violence in particular, the situation had only grown worse. In short, that his Operation Restore Peace had fallen short of its target. So had Stephenson King’s Operation that not only had failed to Restore Confidence (confidence in what?) but also had produced the Pandora’s Box that gave the U.S. State Department every excuse to abandon our over-burdened police precisely when they were in greatest need of a helping hand.

As for the gargantuan pachyderm in the room, suffice it to say at this juncture that Allen Chastanet threw a whole lotta moolah (some say close to $400,000 a year!) at a DPP, on his promise to domesticate the ORC’s Rosemary’s Baby. Six years later, the police and the nation continue to suffer the impact of IMPACS, even as the happy-happy seldom sighted DPP monthly weeps all the way to the bank.

A recent public statement by Vieux Fort’s parliamentary representative: “As a country, as a people, as a community, we cannot descend into hopelessness. We cannot normalize a life of crime. We must fight it. We cannot avoid discussion of it. We now have to produce a new agenda to fight crime in our country.” This from the man who on an earlier outing had admitted the agendas of successive administrations, including the three under his leadership, had failed to deliver on their repeated promises of crime suppression. (His attempted shot in 2005 at revising the Criminal Code to deny bail to persons charged with murder, rape, illegal possession of firearms and other felonies had provided legal headaches by the score!)

He went on: “We need to be bold. We need to be imaginative. We need to be dramatic. We need to revisit all the approaches of the past and discard what has not worked.”

Perhaps Philip J. Pierre was not listening, judging by his recently announced anti-crime initiatives—increased minimum fines, the appointment of a Special Prosecutor to work in tandem with the DPP, stiffer sentences for gun-related offences—most of which seem to have been retrieved from Kenny Anthony’s been there, done that file. Small wonder that during his contribution to the most recent budget debate, the former prime minister lauded his former deputy for having learned his lessons well.

Hopefully, not too well!