Deshaune Harrigan, the 24-year-old man police have accused of fatally shooting Jason Carroll on Main Street Tuesday afternoon, remained jailed Thursday in lieu of $350,000 bail.
New details emerged from an advice-of-rights hearing in Territorial Court Thursday morning.
Detective Delbert Phipps of the Police Department Major Crime Task Force testified that several witnesses have told investigators they saw Harrigan and Carroll involved in a struggle before three shots rang out Tuesday afternoon near the Main Street end of Drake's Passage.
Phipps said Carroll died at the scene from two gunshot wounds, one to the chest and another to the right arm. The medical examiner, Dr. Francisco Landron, who performed the autopsy Wednesday, said Carroll died from massive internal bleeding resulting from the bullet wound to the chest.
"He had a lot of internal hemorrhaging," Landron said. The gunshot wound to the left side of the chest was perhaps the fatal injury, he added.
Phipps presented a chronology of the events surrounding the death of Carroll, the 18-year-old son of Assistant U.S. Attorney James Carroll.
"At the scene, witnesses told police Harrigan ran through Drake's Passage to the waterfront after the shooting," Phipps testified, and he "discarded the murder weapon, a .40 caliber handgun, in the bushes as he fled toward Vendors Plaza."
At the plaza, Phipps said, a police officer encountered Harrigan with blood on his hand, clothes and face. Phipps said that statements by both witnesses and Harrigan led police to believe that Carroll and a friend of Harrigan were involved in a struggle which escalated and led to Harrigan getting involved.
The fight between Harrigan and Carroll intensified and led to the shooting, Phipps said. "Witnesses that came forward identified the defendant, Harrigan, in a photo array," Phipps, a 13-year veteran investigator, told the court and the audience, which included Harrigan's grandparents and another family member.
Phipps said police obtained the murder weapon from a witness who saw Harrigan drop a brown paper bag in the bushes, retrieved it and handed it over to an officer. The blood-soaked bag contained the black framed handgun, the officer said.
Harrigan was detained on Tuesday, questioned and released.
On Wednesday Harrigan was again apprehended and questioned by Homicide Task Force members, along with the friend who had been with him in Drake's Passage on Tuesday. It was then that Harrigan is alleged to have admitted to police that he was involved in both the struggle and the shooting of Jason Carroll. "He told us that he and the victim had a fight, shots rang out and suddenly a gun appeared in his hands," Phipps told the court.
Under questioning by prosecutor Guy H. Mitchell, Phipps said what Harrigan said on Tuesday differed from what he said on Wednesday. Phipps said Harrigan admitted the shooting on "the second day of questioning." Harrigan was arrested on second-degree murder charges Wednesday around 9 p.m. after a lengthy interrogation by police. He was also charged with illegal weapons possession.
Mitchell suggested that an additional charge of possessing an unlicenced firearm with an obliterated serial number may be added.
Phipps, who has been assigned to the Homicide Task Force for the last six years, also testified that Harrigan's friend who reportedly was involved in the initial scuffle with Carroll fled west on Main Street after the shooting, making his getaway through an alley near Coconuts Bar. Phipps said police have no other suspects in the murder at the present time.
Territorial Court Judge Ishmael Meyers rejected a suggestion by attorney Clive Rivers, representing Harrigan, that the government had not proven probable cause to arrest Harrigan. "A lot of persons were running away from the scene when the shots were fired," Rivers said. "I do not believe the government has brought forward enough evidence to detain this young man."
Rivers sat in at the advice-of-rights hearing for public defender Jesse Bethel, who cited a conflict in representing Harrigan at his initial court appearance.
Mitchell asked that bail be set at $1 million, terming Harrigan a threat to the community and a flight risk. "Anyone who would openly fire a gun into a crowd on Main Street is a danger to this community," he said.
In addition, Mitchell cited testimony by Phipps that when officers went to Hospital Ground on Wednesday to bring both Harrigan and his friend in for questioning, the suspect attempted to run from his home through a back door. "This I would say is a flight risk," Mitchell told Meyers.
Meyers set bail after telling the defendant that the court found probable cause to charge him with murder and weapons possession.
Harrigan, a native of St. Thomas who attended high school in New York, reportedly returned from Long Island after being offered a job with Virgin Islands Fire Services. Attorney John Zebedee will represent him on June 8 at his arraignment, the proceeding in which Harrigan will enter his plea to the charges against him.
