In the early hours of Saturday morning, a 48-year-old Arnos Vale-based businessman became the third local business operator killed near the entrance of the Arnos Vale sporting complex since 2023, pushing the 2025 homicide tally in St. Vincent and the Grenadines to 32, according to official police statistics.
Local law enforcement confirmed the victim as Peter Minors, who was shot multiple times at his private residence around 2:45 a.m. First responders rushed the injured man to Kingstown’s Milton Cato Memorial Hospital for emergency care, but medical teams were unable to save his life. In an official public statement, police confirmed that investigations into the fatal shooting are active and ongoing, and are urging members of the public with any relevant details — no matter how small or seemingly insignificant — to come forward to assist with the probe. Consistent with standard police protocol for open homicide investigations, the official statement released to the public shared no suspect details, no identified motives, and no insight into active investigative theories.
Local crime observers in St. Vincent and the Grenadines have drawn attention to the alarming pattern of violence targeting individuals who operated businesses in the stretch near the sporting complex entrance. Minors’ killing marks the third fatal shooting of a businessperson with ties to the area since 2023.
The first of these three killings occurred on April 11, 2023, when Jomo Brudy, also known by the alias “Top Dog”, died in hospital hours after he was shot alongside another man in Arnos Vale’s Pole Yard neighborhood. At the time of his death, Brudy worked as a street vendor in Kingstown, but he had previously operated his business in the same area near the sporting complex before relocating to the capital. Brudy’s death marked the fourth time he had been targeted in a gun attack, and the second in a 12-month period. His assailants struck him multiple times in his upper body, including the shoulder, neck, chest, and abdomen, causing fatal injuries. Brudy first survived a 2022 shooting in Pole Yard that killed another person and left a third individual wounded. He had previously sustained gunshot injuries in a 2008 attack in Ottley Hall that left one woman dead, and survived a 2009 gunshot wound to the groin outside his Edinboro home just one day after he testified in the preliminary inquiry into that 2008 killing. That case ultimately resulted in a 20-year prison sentence for an Ottley Hall man in 2012. In May 2022, eight months after being taken into custody, Brudy was acquitted of murder charges connected to the 2010 shooting death of Rillan Hill resident Shawn “Darkie” Gordon.
The most recent killing before Minors’ death occurred on October 29, 2024, when 56-year-old vendor Marilyn John, widely known as “Maro”, was fatally shot in the Paul Over neighborhood of Arnos Vale. John, who operated her business near the supermarket at the sporting complex entrance, was killed just a few hundred feet from her home, a short distance from the site where another man had been murdered earlier that same year. John’s killing came just three months after her own son, Jomarl John, was shot and killed in Pole Yard on July 13, 2024. Responding officers were called to the area around 9:30 p.m. after residents reported hearing what sounded like explosions that did not match the noise of traditional bamboo blowing. When police arrived at the scene, they found John’s van positioned across the roadway with multiple bullet-riddled windows. John was unresponsive in the driver’s seat, bleeding heavily from her wounds, and was pronounced dead at the scene. At the time, her murder pushed St. Vincent and the Grenadines’ 2024 homicide count to 39.
Minors himself made local headlines just months before his death, in August 2024, when police charged him and 22-year-old Saint Lucian laborer Glen Louisien with possession of a controlled substance. Louisien pleaded guilty to possession of 2,132 grams (4.7 pounds) of cannabis with intent to distribute in Arnos Vale on August 26, 2024. Minors entered a not guilty plea to the charges against him, and prosecutors ultimately withdrew the charge. Louisien was sentenced to pay a fine of EC$1,500 within one month, or serve three months in prison in default of payment.