Patrol officers responded to a 911 call reporting a shooting on Friday in Thomasville on St. Thomas, the V.I. Police Department reported.
According to the police report, a woman called stating that her friend was shot at least once, and she appeared unresponsive. She identified the shooter as 37-year-old Simon Rawlins Jr., and indicated that he had fled the scene after shooting her friend.
Once on scene, the patrol officers made contact with a woman who appeared to have suffered at least one gunshot wound to her upper body. Emergency Medical Technicians also arrived at the scene and concluded at 6:15 p.m. that the female victim did not have any signs of life. The victim was identified by next of kin as 33-year-old Mardette Ward, the report stated.
A manhunt began in the Thomasville and Bovoni areas for Rawlins. He was subsequently apprehended without incident and placed under arrest, stated the report.
Ward’s death is the eighth homicide of the year on St. Thomas, and the 10th in the territory, according to the Source Homicide List.*
Anyone having any information about this incident can contact the Virgin Islands Police Department at (340-774-2211) or the Criminal Investigation Unit’s Major Crimes Division at 340-642-8449. Individuals can also call Crime Stoppers at 1-800-222-8477.
* The Source Homicide List is a chronological log of the homicides recorded in 2024 in the U.S. Virgin Islands, as reported by the VIPD. Cases are broken down by island. While this listing is based on VIPD reports, the Source does not include suicides or vehicular homicides in its listing, which the police and some other media do. This can lead to a discrepancy in the number of incidents reported.
