Tourist Shot in St. Lucia

[krafthaus]

Our group just finished a bareboat charter out of St. Lucia on Friday and we were leaving St. Lucia from Hewanorra airport for Toronto yesterday when we met a man in the departure lounge that related a story of being shot 4 times on or around February 1st and survived. He was shot in the left lung narrowly missing his heart plus shoulder, hip and wrist. He was flying home to somewhere near Toronto.

The man was 30-35 years old, clean cut, physically fit, well spoken and had fresh dressings on wounds that he showed us where he was shot. I believe he is a Canadian citizen as he said the embassy staff were involved, but may have originally been from the Dominican Republic. He indicated he picked up cash from the CIBC ATM in Rodney Bay across the street from the IGA along the road from Castries (we used this very machine while we were there) around mid day, stopped in for some brief shopping and was returning to his rental car in the IGA parking lot when 2 men flashed a gun at him and had him get in his vehicle. He was taken towards his resort, eventually told to get out of the car, asked for his bank card PIN which he gave and said he'd give them what they were after just not to shoot him. The one man indicated he could describe them to the police and told the other "do what you need to do". At this point he ran but tripped on a wire he didn't see, fell down and was shot when the other man caught up to him. He was left for dead after playing dead. They took a small amount of cash, a pair of Bulgari sunglasses and his wallet.

Some locals helped him, he went to hospital for surgery and he is recovering from his wounds. He told us the 2 men - one Jamaican national around 40 years of age and the second a St. Lucian were found and he picked them out of a Police line up on Friday. A court case is pending where he would testify via video conference he said when I asked if he would be back for the trial.

We bought him some lunch before departing and when we arrived in Toronto we missed seeing him reunite with his family.

I've Googled to see if I can find any reference to this and have found nothing. Has anyone in St. Lucia or that part of the Carib heard of this incident? I have no reason to doubt this man's story as he related it to several of us, but am curious to have it substantiated and learn if there are any more details.

[Capt Phil]

Sounds like LA! Phil