CHARLOTTE AMALIE — Members of the Virgin Islands Police Department Operation Rewind Task Force were conducting traffic enforcement on St. Peter Mountain Road (Four Corners) at 5:00 p.m. Tuesday when they observed a red SUV towing a boat failing to stop at the intersection’s stop sign.
Officers stopped the vehicle which had three occupants. Upon making contact with the driver, officers immediately recognized him from a previous traffic stop where he was not in possession of a driver’s license, according to the VIPD.
Officers at that time inquired if the driver had a driver’s license again, but upon the officers’ request, everyone in the vehicle began to display unusual nervous behavior and kept looking at a black bag on the rear seat of the vehicle, VIPD Communications Director Glen Dratte said.
Police also noticed that the occupants of the vehicle made subtle attempts to reach for the black bag. For officer safety, officers made a request to look in the black bag, which was granted to them by the
driver of the vehicle, Dratte said. But after the assent, the driver then tried to grab the bag out of the officers hands without success. he said.
Upon inspection of the bag, a tan colored handgun equipped with what’s called a chip (it makes the weapon operate fully automatic like that of a machine gun) was discovered in the bag, according to police.
David Medina Valdivieso, 26, Jhosnel Garcia, 27, and Andres Guerrero, 48, were taken
into custody and read their rights by officers on the scene, police said.
The three men were each charged with constructive possession of unlicensed firearm and booked.
Bail for each man was set at $100,000.00. Unable to post bail, they were all remanded to the custody of the Bureau of Corrections pending their advice-of-rights hearings.