A man was shot fatally on Main Street near the intersection of Raadets Gade in downtown Charlotte Amalie around 1:15 p.m. Tuesday.
By the time police and an ambulance arrived on the scene, the man, who did not appear to be a tourist, was dead, according to St. Thomas-St. John Chamber of Commerce executive director Joe Aubain, who heard shots being fired and rushed to the scene.
The man was struck in the abdomen and died within three minutes, Aubain said.
Aubain said he and a chamber 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 started cardiopulmonary resuscitation on the victim while Aubain rushed into a nearby shop to call the police, but the man died before officers or an ambulance arrived.
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 the body of the slain man.
He said he did not see the assailant fleeing and had not received any information as to a description of that person or how the shooting came about.
did CPR
