A 31-year-old Georgetown man with a long history of serious criminal charges, including attempted murder, rape, wounding, and burglary, was discovered dead from apparent gunshot wounds in an east coast town of St. Vincent and the Grenadines (SVG) this past Saturday. The killing of Clydon Cato, who also went by the alias “Svage”, has pushed the Caribbean nation’s total homicide count for 2024 to 29, marking the second fatal shooting recorded across the country in just seven days.
As of press time, the details and motive behind Cato’s death remain undisclosed, and national law enforcement has not yet released an official statement on the case to the public.
Cato’s criminal history stretches back several years, with high-profile proceedings drawing public attention in recent times. In May 2023, he successfully won an acquittal in the SVG High Court on charges of rape and actual bodily harm, after representing himself in the trial. The charges stemmed from a 2019 allegation, in which an adult female complainant claimed that Cato had attacked her while the two were washing at a local river. According to her account, she refused Cato’s sexual advance, after which he dragged her into nearby brush and assaulted her. After deliberation, a nine-member jury returned a not guilty verdict on all counts related to the incident. At the time of his acquittal, Cato was already serving a custodial sentence for separate burglary and wounding convictions.
Months before the rape acquittal, in October 2022, the Georgetown Magistrate’s Court issued a bench warrant for Cato’s arrest. The warrant came one week after his wounding trial was put on hold, after Cato reported feeling ill on two separate occasions during proceedings.
The most serious charge Cato faced before his death stemmed from a November 2021 incident. He was initially charged with attempted murder, after he allegedly struck Hyron Ryan, a resident of Spring Village, Georgetown, with a stone. The attack left Ryan with severe injuries that required intensive care treatment at the Milton Cato Memorial Hospital. The charge was ultimately downgraded to wounding before the case concluded.
Cato’s fatal shooting comes just one week after another high-profile killing in SVG: on July 24, 30-year-old Amir Roberts, also known by the alias Miller, was shot multiple times — including a gunshot wound to the head — while he was on the side of a road in the West Kingstown community of Lowman’s Leeward. Roberts’ killing brought the total number of homicides recorded in SVG during the month of July to eight, underscoring growing concerns about violent crime across the island nation.