A 23-year-old man who was already awaiting trial on charges of murder and attempted murder has been killed by multiple gunshots early Friday during an attempted break-in at a licensed commercial cannabis operation in St. Vincent and the Grenadines, local law enforcement confirmed.
Joel Williams, a long-term resident of Ottley Hall who carried an extensive rap sheet of firearm-related and violent offenses, was pronounced dead at the scene of the incident at CANNASVG farm, where responding officers found his body with multiple gunshot wounds.
The Royal St. Vincent and the Grenadines Police Force confirmed that dispatch received emergency calls just after 12:10 a.m. alerting officers that two masked, heavily armed men had forced entry into the Georgetown-based cannabis property. By the time first responders arrived at the location, only Williams was located on the site, already incapacitated by his injuries.
A district medical officer officially pronounced Williams dead at the scene, and authorities have scheduled a post-mortem examination to formally confirm the exact cause of his death. To date, law enforcement has not released any information identifying who fired the fatal shots that killed Williams, nor have they announced any suspects of taken into custody in connection with the shooting. The second man who allegedly accompanied Williams during the burglary attempt remains unidentified and has successfully evaded capture, with police still working to trace his whereabouts as of the latest updates.
Williams’ death closes a three-year string of increasingly serious criminal charges against the young man, dating back to 2022. In October of that year, Williams was found in illegal possession of a loaded pistol and five rounds of ammunition in New Montrose. The case led to a conviction at the Serious Offences Court in January 2023, when Williams was 18 years old. During his sentencing, then-Chief Magistrate Rechanne Browne publicly noted that the country’s rising tide of gun-related crime had turned her courtroom into a de facto “gun court”, a remark that underscored the scope of the region’s ongoing violent crime crisis.
Just months after that conviction, Williams was named as one of four men charged in connection with a violent crime spree that included robberies and kidnappings at the Campden Park Industrial Estate. Charges from that incident included trespassing on commercial property while armed, assaulting a facility worker, and kidnapping a warehouse security guard by force.
Most recently, in February 2026, Williams and Ottley Hall neighbor Kyle Providence were formally charged with murder and attempted murder. The charges stem from a February 2025 shooting in Edinboro that left 24-year-old Carl Quow of Chauncey dead and another victim, Jolani Thompson, injured.