This is an updated version of an earlier story.
A young man shot fatally on Main Street near the Raadets Gade intersection in Charlotte Amalie Tuesday afternoon was identified as Jason Carroll, the son of Assistant U.S. Attorney James Carroll and his wife, Cecilia.
A police statement issued late Tuesday afternoon indicated that shots were fired in an altercation but that Carroll was apparently an innocent victim of the gunfire.
At least two shots were fired at about 1:20 p.m., and Carroll was dead by the time police and two ambulances arrived on the scene a few minutes later, according to St. Thomas-St. John Chamber of Commerce executive director Joe Aubain, who heard the gunfire and rushed to the scene.
Carroll, a University of the Virgin Islands student, was struck in the abdomen and died within three minutes, Aubain said. A statement issued by the Police Department late Tuesday afternoon said the victim was wounded in the chest and the left arm and described him as "an apparent innocent by-passer."
According to unconfirmed reports, Carroll was shot after intervening in an attempted robbery in a Main Street jewelry store. The police statement said the shots were fired after "two individuals apparently had an altercation." The victim was felled near the H.Stern Jewellers shop just east of Raadets Gade.
Aubain said he and a Chamber of Commerce colleague, Joe Elmore, were walking back to the chamber office from lunch on Back Street and had just turned the corner onto Main Street by the Captain's Corner gift shop when they heard two or three shots. "I thought at first it was a backfire, but Joe [Elmore] knew what it was," Aubain said. Elmore, a longtime staff worker with the American Red Cross, has had experience serving in war-torn areas.
Aubain said Elmore and another individual at the scene started cardiopulmonary resuscitation on the victim while Aubain rushed into a nearby shop to call the police. Carroll died before or just as an ambulance arrived, he said.
According to Aubain, while most tourists in the vicinity were "basically trying to stay in other stores or head towards the waterfront," a large crowd of about a hundred people gathered around the victim within moments of the shooting. Aubain said he "tried to help with crowd control" until police arrived. He said he was not aware of any bicycle officers on the scene and did not observe any weapon by Carroll's body.
Other witnesses said the assailant was a black man about 5'9" tall, wearing a white shirt and blue jeans, and that he ran toward Back Street after the shooting. The police statement said a suspect was being sought.
According to a friend of his family, Carroll had just finished his spring semester studies at UVI and was downtown to look for a summer job.
