Unlike the day four years ago when he left, Stephenson Peltier returned to the U.S. Virgin Islands on Tuesday wearing handcuffs, a suspect in homicide.
Peltier is the second suspect charged in the March 24, 2009, murder of Jahmari Joseph, which occurred on “Gasso Hill” in Estate Bovoni.
According to police, Peltier and Ibn Z. Anderson fired shots at Joseph and his brother as they walked up the hill. Joseph was hit and later died. Detectives said Anderson and Peltier left St. Thomas on one-way airline tickets within days of the incident.
Detectives from the Major Crimes Bureau on St. Thomas secured first-degree murder arrest warrants for Peltier and Anderson and information about the suspects was entered in the National Crime Information Center’s database.
On May 6, Anderson was picked up by the Montgomery County Sheriff’s Office in Houston during a routine patrol, and the arrest triggered the NCIS system. He was extradited back to the territory May 18.
Detectives caught up with Peltier at the Oakdale Federal Correctional Facility in Louisiana, where the suspect was serving an eight-year sentence for armed robbery. They served him with the first-degree murder warrant and extradited him back to St. Thomas, where he was arraigned on the charge.
Peltier was held on $500,000 bail and remanded to the Bureau of Corrections pending further court action.