A wave of brutal gang-related violence has shaken St. Vincent and the Grenadines, with a third fatal shooting in as many days bringing the country’s 2026 homicide count to 13, law enforcement sources have confirmed. The latest victim, 19-year-old Perrance Matthews, a Layou-based teenager just weeks away from his 20th birthday, was found dead with gunshot wounds to the head and chest along the river defence in Buccament Bay early on Sunday, April 13, 2026. Local residents reported hearing multiple gunshots ring out in the area throughout Saturday evening, placing the time of death between Saturday night and Sunday morning.
Investigators and insider sources have drawn a clear connection between Matthews’ killing and a double homicide that unfolded just 48 hours earlier in Stoney Ground, Kingstown. That attack left two men dead: 29-year-old Enrique “Shoubu” John, a Layou resident who was Matthews’ relative, and 22-year-old Raheem Guy, John’s close associate. John was shot dead inside a store at Russells Shopping Centre, while Guy was killed on the sidewalk outside the Caribbean Medical Imaging Centre.
The bloodshed is the latest escalation of a long-running gang conflict that first erupted in 2023, ending a five-year stretch without any homicides recorded in Layou. At that time, four murders occurred in just six weeks, and multiple injuries have been recorded in ongoing clashes ever since. The current conflict pits a gang based in Central Kingstown with ties to the Layou community — the faction that both John and Matthews were linked to, according to insiders — against rival factions based in Rose Place (also called Bottom Town) and Ottley Hall, two West Kingstown neighborhoods. Sources also confirmed John was part of a group that was in active conflict with a Layou-based family aligned to the Bottom Town gang, adding another layer of tension to the violence.
John’s killing came barely 72 hours after a St. Vincent court rejected a police bid to revoke his bail, which had been granted on a 2026 attempted murder charge. John had first been charged in February 2026 for the November 2025 attempted murder of Layou resident Tilon Patterson. Both John and Patterson were shot in a public shootout with unidentified assailants while traveling along a Central Leeward road on November 2, 2025. As part of his bail conditions set at EC$50,000, John was ordered to avoid all contact with Patterson, check in regularly at the Layou Police Station three times a week, and abide by a curfew requiring him to stay home from 8:30 p.m. to 6 a.m.
That curfew was broken on April 5, 2026, when John was spotted at an after-curfew entertainment event in Central Leeward. Police moved to arrest him and applied to the court to have his bail revoked. During the April 8 court hearing, a defense witness testified that John had planned to leave the event before curfew and she was en route to pick him up when police stopped her vehicle. The court ultimately sided with the defense and denied the prosecution’s request to revoke bail. Three days later, John was dead.
John was no stranger to the court system: he was one of six people awaiting trial on charges including attempted murder, robbery, illegal possession of firearms and ammunition, and property damage connected to a broad-daylight robbery at the GECCU branch in South Rivers in July 2024. Back in 2017, John and two other Layou residents were also charged with rape related to an offense involving a minor between the ages of 13 and 15.
As of Monday, investigators have not announced any arrests in connection with the three latest killings, but law enforcement continues to probe the gang links connecting all three deaths. The uptick in violence has pushed the 2026 homicide total to 13, already nearly a third of the 40 homicides recorded across St. Vincent and the Grenadines in all of 2025.