Effective today, August 17, the territory steps back to the Stay at Home or orange alert phase. "This means that effective 6:00 a.m. Monday, all non-essential businesses are ordered closed." "Non-essential public sector workers are also to remain at home. This phase of alert will continue for at least the next two weeks, at which time we will re-evaluate whether it is safe to advance again to the yellow alert.
A shooting incident in Frederiksted outside the Yam Yam Restaurant Sunday afternoon left a man dead, and a bullet also grazed a 7-year-old who was in a passing vehicle. The Virgin Islands Police Department's Public Information Officer Toby Derima provides more details.
Senator Kenneth Gittens, a former law enforcement officer, says, "there is clearly a crisis in leadership at the Virgin Islands Police Department as law enforcement has not been able to quell the escalating war on our streets. I am calling for an immediate meeting of law enforcement and community leaders with Governor Bryan."
"I have repeatedly requested that a strategic plan be implemented to deploy our officers more effectively and to increase cooperation between our local law enforcement agencies. Our community is too small and too close for this to continue."
Shower and thunderstorm activity has continued to increase with a fast-moving tropical wave about 500 miles east of the Windward Islands. It's expected to move west at about 20 mph during the next few days. That fast forward speed is likely to limit significant development while the system approaches the Windward and the southern Leeward Islands today and moves across the eastern Caribbean Sea tomorrow. After that, however, the system is expected to move more slowly westward across the central and western Caribbean Sea, where upper-level winds could become more conducive to developing a tropical depression during the middle-to-latter part of this week. A second tropical wave is following on that system's heels, the NHC said, and the agency warned that that one bears watching.