ST. CROIX — Six years after her 16-year-old son was killed in a barrage of gunfire while walking through his Sion Farm neighborhood, Shemona Cascen stood before families of other murder victims Friday and said the grief she has carried since that night has increasingly given way to anger.
The moment carried an additional weight: Friday, September 25, would have been Tintawee Christian’s 23rd birthday. The teenager, known as “Tawee,” was killed on August 17, 2020, less than six weeks before he would have turned 17. In a 2022 interview with the Consortium, his parents spoke about the life he never had the chance to live and their continuing search for justice. Read VIC’s 2022 interview with Tintawee Christian’s family.
Speaking at the Women’s Coalition of St. Croix’s 15th Annual National Day of Remembrance for Murder Victims at the Sunny Isles Amphitheater, Ms. Cascen recalled raising a son who, she said, did what parents and society asked of him. He did not smoke, use drugs or associate with bad company, she told the audience. In her view, he had done everything that should have allowed him simply to live his life.
“He was supposed to be able to walk in his neighborhood inside Farm. He’s supposed to be free and move out, right?” she said, referring to Sion Farm. As she reflected on his killing and the years that have followed, Ms. Cascen told the gathering, “My weeping and my moaning turning to anger.”
Tintawee was walking in the Sion Farm area near the Mill with another young man when they were ambushed by gunfire from a vehicle on the night of August 17, 2020. Contemporary Consortium reporting cited residents who said well over 100 rounds were fired during the attack. Tintawee died at the scene from multiple gunshot wounds, while the second victim survived a gunshot wound to the chest.
Ms. Cascen told Friday’s audience that approximately 150 shots were fired from an AR-15. The Consortium’s contemporaneous reporting established that residents described more than 100 rounds being fired, but the available report did not independently establish a 150-round count or identify an AR-15 as the firearm used. Those more specific details therefore remain Ms. Cascen’s account of the attack.
Tintawee was an honor student at Central High School who played football, baseball and basketball and had represented the Virgin Islands in sports abroad. When WTJX revisited his killing for its Virgin Islands Case Files program in January 2023, V.I. Police Department Lt. Naomi Joseph described him as an innocent bystander caught in violence police believed was connected to a longstanding feud involving Sion Farm and Castle Coakley. The program described his homicide at that time as unsolved.
Ms. Cascen’s remarks Friday, however, extended beyond the circumstances of her son’s death. She confronted what she sees as a larger problem of silence in a small community where people often know one another and may know information about violent crimes but are unwilling or afraid to speak.
“We there between a rock and a hard place,” she said, arguing that people cannot continue living alongside one another while refusing to confront what is happening to the territory’s children. Her frustration echoes concerns Tintawee’s family raised with the Consortium in 2022, when they said people in the community appeared to have information but investigators still needed witnesses willing to provide evidence that could move the case forward.
Ms. Cascen then directed some of her strongest criticism toward the V.I. Police Department, raising concerns about whether residents can safely provide information to law enforcement. She alleged that some officers disclose the identities or information of people who speak to police to relatives, partners or associates of individuals involved in criminal activity.
“They need to stop give people names and stop showing people who say what,” she said, later calling the issue an “open secret” and arguing that the department needs to be cleaned up.
The Consortium has not independently verified Ms. Cascen’s allegations about officers disclosing information, and she did not present evidence supporting the claims during the remarks captured in the video. Because the accusations concern conduct within the police department, VIPD should be given an opportunity to respond to them before publication of the final version of this article.
Ms. Cascen also criticized what she described as insufficient investigative journalism surrounding violent crime and other problems in the territory, saying she believes people who probe deeply into sensitive matters can face pressure. Her remarks reflected a broader frustration with institutions she believes have failed to provide families with answers.
Her comments came during an evening designed specifically to give those families a voice. The remembrance included community speakers, performances, an open microphone, a healing circle and the Women’s Coalition’s Wall of Remembrance, which records the names of St. Croix murder victims dating back to 1974.
For Ms. Cascen, Friday’s appearance was not simply an act of remembrance. Six years after losing a son whom police themselves later described as an innocent bystander, she used the occasion — on the day he would have turned 23 — to challenge the community, law enforcement and other institutions to confront the conditions that allow killings to remain without answers.
