The French side--we witness a shooting and spend the afternoon with gendarmes!

Today started out on Plan B.  We were going to Anguilla, but the day began with rain and clouds.  What to do....?

We decided to go to Marigot on the French side for brunch anyway, but when we got there, the cruise ship crowds were a  bit overwhelming.  So Plan C...off to Grand Case to find a waterfront restaurant, but now for lunch.

But Grand Case restaurants were slow to open and on the pricey side.  Last year most were doing 1-for-1 Euros to dollars, but not this year.  So Bud suggested going to Au Grain du Sel (The Grain of Salt) in Cul de Sac, still on the French side. They have wonderful French pizza and a nice, funky decor. Steve and Noreen may remember it from last year. This is now Plan D.

We got there and waited a bit for the owner to surface, then settled at a round table in front of the open windows overlooking the street and two other restaurants on the opposite side of the street...Panchos and Ti Bouchon. There was a small house in between them.

As we were waiting, we could hear arguing from outside and saw one man on the steps of the house in between the restaurants, and another on our side of the street. They both had machetes and were gesturing and yelling in Spanish.  The man on the steps picked up a rock and motioned like he was going to throw it, and the man on our side of the street ducked behind some bushes and came out with a shotgun.

In a moment he raised the shotgun (with a sawed off stock) and shot at the man across the street. We could see the pellets hit the house. A car backed out from behind the bushes, did a reverse turn, and the guy with the shotgun pushed the driver into the passenger's seat, jumped in and they took off towards Marigot. Rich was snapping pics, and while he didn't catch the shot itself, he did get clear shot of the getway car--including the license plate.

Bud ran across the street to see what happened and found that the man had been shot in the right side and was lying on the floor. You can see the shotgun pellets in the yellow wall.

Pretty soon the gendarmes arrived.

As soon as they found out we witnessed the shooting and Rich had a picture, they wanted to see it and hear what we saw.

Pretty soon a crowd gathered and the ambulance and EMT's arrived.

We were glad to see the man was still alive when they transported him to the hospital.

Meantime, our pizza was ready.  We sat down to lunch and started chatting with the owner (though he spoke primarily French).  We learned that the man shot was one of a number of immigrants from the Dominican Republic (Santo Domingo) and had 14 wives (yes, 14!) and many children. He said before they came the area of Cul de Sac was "tranquil et calme"--very peaceful

The gendarmes came in to ask us more questions.

Then they asked if we would come to the Gendarmerie at La Savane and let them download some pictures and take a statement.  This took a while--translation issues and also they were very insistent on getting every possible detail. But they were both cheerful and professional.They wrote out the statement in French, then translated. Rich was the one with the photo, so he signed.



I took this shot of some evidence bags lying on the desk--sealed with old-fashioned sealing wax!

In all it was an exciting afternoon. I was impressed with the gendarmes.  They thanked us very much and said "We will get this man, thanks to you."

Tomorrow we will try for a more typical vacation day.