A fatal shooting early Tuesday morning has left one man dead in Kingstown, St. Vincent and the Grenadines, marking the latest in a string of violent incidents that have pushed the country’s annual homicide toll to a new high. The incident unfolded around 1 a.m. at the derelict former Cinerama building located on White Chapel Road, just a short distance from His Majesty’s Prison.
Local law enforcement and news sources have identified the victim as 54-year-old Mark Shallow, who maintained ties to both Georgetown and Kingstown. Shallow was among a group of unhoused people, many struggling with substance abuse, that had been occupying the long-abandoned property.
Shallow was no stranger to the country’s justice system: court records show he accumulated more than 30 criminal convictions over the years, with most of his charges tied to cocaine trafficking and violent offenses. Most recently, in January 2025, Shallow was handed a prison sentence after authorities apprehended him in possession of 127 individual cocaine wrappings totaling 22 grams, found near Kingstown’s Central Police Station. That arrest marked just one in a long line of run-ins with the law: in October 2024, he received a two-year suspended prison sentence with a one-year probation period on a wounding charge. Two years prior, in August 2023, he was charged with two separate counts of unlawful wounding. Prosecutors claimed Shallow attacked a 41-year-old female vendor from Campden Park with a knife during an altercation on White Chapel Road, slicing her forehead and inflicting a wound above her right eye.
According to reliable sources close to the investigation, the attacker remains unidentified. The assailant gained entry to the abandoned building before opening fire, striking Shallow in the head while he slept on a makeshift bed positioned some distance from the building’s entrance. Shallow died at the scene from his injury, and the shooter fled the area in the direction of McKies Hill, leaving few immediate clues for responding officers.
Shallow’s killing comes on the heels of three separate shooting incidents across Kingstown that left two people wounded just over the previous weekend. Nationwide, the death pushes St. Vincent and the Grenadines 2025 homicide count to 32, and this slaying marks the fourth fatal gun-related killing in the capital in just 30 days. The most recent prior shooting deaths occurred on July 17, when three men — Claude John of Redemption Sharpes, 35-year-old Karon “Twin” Bowens, and 24-year-old Giovannie Grant, both residents of Ottley Hall — were gunned down in Kingstown’s Chinatown district. That commercial area, situated directly across from Central Police Station between the Solidarity Carpark and the city’s fish market, is a busy hub for local retailers and businesses.
Notably, Tuesday’s killing is the first homicide to occur under the new leadership of the Royal St. Vincent and the Grenadines Police Force. It comes just after Trevor “Buju” Bailey and Junior Simmons assumed their new roles as acting commissioner of police and acting deputy commissioner of police, respectively, placing new attention on the force’s ongoing efforts to curb rising violent crime across the islands.