The Caribbean nation of St. Vincent and the Grenadines is grappling with a fresh wave of violent crime after a third fatal shooting this month pushed the country’s 2025 homicide count to 23. The most recent victim, 31-year-old Sandre Matthias, was gunned down late Friday near a local minimart in the Glen community of East St. George.
First responders were alerted to the scene by witnesses just after 8 p.m. local time, but arriving officers found Matthias, an adult male resident of the area, already unresponsive. He was pronounced dead at the scene, and official identification was released by authorities over the weekend.
The killing marks the third violent death recorded in the country in the first week of July, putting St. Vincent and the Grenadines on track to remain far below last year’s total homicide count of 40 – which itself was a 14-victim drop from 2023’s full-year total. Even with the downward trend in overall annual violence, the recent string of back-to-back killings has put renewed pressure on local law enforcement, who are already working to solve two other recent high-profile murders.
Earlier the same day Matthias was killed, police issued a public appeal for information to help track down the person or people responsible for the strangulation death of Lida Lewis, an 84-year-old local farmer. Lewis was killed at her property in Peruvian Vale on July 2, just two days after another fatal shooting that claimed the life of 49-year-old Gayron Jackson. Jackson was shot multiple times on July 1 while traveling through Mt. Young, outside Georgetown, on his way to the mountain interior to purchase coconuts, and died at the scene before emergency services could arrive.
Authorities have not yet released any information about potential motives or persons of interest in Matthias’s killing, and are urging any members of the public who were in the Glen area near the minimart Friday night with relevant information to contact the Major Investigation Taskforce anonymously through the country’s independent crime tipline.