John McCarthy
CHARLOTTE AMALIE — Police say they are investigating a peace officer who fired a gun into the air to try to break up a fight outside the Windward Passage Hotel on Monday night.
Virgin Islands Police Commissioner Delroy Richards Sr. said he was aware of the situation after being provided with a copy of a cellphone video captured by a bystander.
The three minute, forty-four second video earned the officer who perpetrated the shooting a drubbing on social media for not using more conventional means to try to stop the fight.
“I’m glad you recorded,” an unidentified woman’s voice says on the video. “Keep recording.”
The video shows a fight that took place outside of the hotel which is on the waterfront in Charlotte Amalie as a group of people stand in the public parking lot watching as the chaotic scene unfolds.
Richards said the person who fired the shot is a peace officer, but not a Virgin Islands Police Department officer.
According to police records, dispatchers dispatched VIPD officers to Wendy’s restaurant, rather than Windward Passage Hotel, leaving the peace officer stranded by himself at the fight.
“All ah police jokee, VIPD gotta go!” a woman is heard saying in the background of the video as the formerly unoccupied public safety van pulls into the parking lot and people begin to disperse.
Soo yall aint going talk about the woman that tried not only to excape the scene but she was trying to run ppl over and yall going ask why tbey fired the shot in the air ???? Yall lucky he aint shoot her he wouls hve been justified erh