Mugshot of Isaac Vigneaux. Photo Credit: THE VIRGIN ISLANDS POLICE DEPARTMENT.
ST. CROIX — A man with a reported history of drug abuse is facing criminal charges for reportedly assaulting multiple members of his girlfriend’s family.
According to court documents, police were summoned to a Christiansted residence in the wee hours of Saturday morning following reports of a domestic disturbance. Responding officers met a woman who told them that her daughter’s boyfriend, Isaac Vigneaux, had attacked multiple family members after the daughter went to pick him up and brought him back home.
The younger woman had returned home crying, her mother said, and pleading for her grandfather to intervene. Both grandparents live in the upstairs apartment of the multi-family home. The older man came downstairs and questioned Vigneaux about what was going on. Vigneaux reportedly responded with profanities and racial slurs before lunging at the 73-year old, who was standing in front of his daughter — the mother of Vigneaux’s girlfriend.
The altercation reportedly transitioned outside, with grandfather and granddaughter attempting to quell the situation. They were joined by grandmother and mother, at which point Vigneux once again tried to attack his girlfriend’s mother. This time, he was reportedly successful, throwing the woman to the ground and hitting her repeatedly in the head. The woman’s minor son tried to protect his mother but Vigneaux reportedly pushed and hit him as well. The enraged man, who the family believed to be intoxicated, also reportedly attacked his girlfriend’s grandparents in the melee, throwing the grandmother to the ground, disarming her of the window crossbar she had grabbed for protection, and using it to hit her in the hand. The grandfather said he was also thrown to the ground by Vigneaux during the altercation. He told police that he so feared for the family’s safety that he had retrieved his licensed firearm from inside the house and placed it in the vehicle for ease of access. Despite not using the gun, the grandfather told officers that he did use his walking stick for protection until police arrived.
During his attempts at de-escalation, the grandfather said he offered Vigneaux a ride away from the home, but his granddaughter’s boyfriend stood on the roof of the car shouting racial slurs and threatening to kill them instead. At one point, the family says, Vigneaux identified himself as Jeffrey Epstein.
Vigneaux was still shouting obscenities when the police arrived, and he accused his girlfriend’s family of being white supremacists. After declining to provide a statement without his lawyer present, Vigneaux was arrested and charged with third-degree assault, two counts of aggravated assault and battery, simple assault and battery, and another count of simple assault and battery as a crime of domestic violence. He was also charged with disturbance of the peace as a crime of domestic violence. He reportedly admitted to officers while being evaluated at the Juan F. Luis Hospital that he had consumed both marijuana and cocaine prior to the incident.
According to court records, an advice of rights hearing was held on Monday, before Magistrate Yolan Brow Ross, and Vigneaux was assigned a public defender. An additional hearing is scheduled for Wednesday, February 18.
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