Homicide investigators in St. Vincent and the Grenadines have arrested two Vincentian men after one of their Scottish coworkers was shot and killed in Canouan on Wednesday night.
Police are yet to comment on the killing, but iWitness News was reliably informed that the dead man has been identified as Daniel Vettrino, 37, the technical services manager at Canouan Estate Resort & Villas.
Vettrino was found in Jim Hill, Canouan, with gunshot wounds around midnight on Wednesday. A doctor pronounced him dead at the scene.
His death has triggered an expansion of an ongoing investigation into the “disappearance” of a plane near Canouan earlier this month. Vettrino used to live in Colombia and the two pilots of the plane are Colombians, well-placed sources have told iWitness News.
Additionally, the aircraft made at least one round trip between Canouan and Argyle International Airport two days before it “disappeared”, according to publicly available data.
Vettrino’s death brings the homicide count in St. Vincent and the Grenadines this year to 20, compared to 15 around the same period in 2025, according to police figures.
It was the second killing in the country in as many days, with the other being in Lowmans Hill in St. Vincent.
The victim in that killing is said to be St. Lucian and police are working to ascertain his identity.
Sources say that police are looking into any possible link between the killing and the “disappearance” of an aeroplane after it departed Argyle International Airport for Tobago on June 12.
The Dominican Republic-registered twin-engine light aircraft, HI1145, a Beechcraft Baron, B58T, departed Argyle International Airport on June 12 at 11:52 a.m. local time.
The aircraft had a filed en-route time of one hour and five minutes, bound for the ANR Robinson International Airport, Tobago, with two people on board.
“The aircraft maintained normal radio contact with Argyle Air Traffic Control after departure and a transfer of communications was done at a position 40 nautical miles south of Argyle International Airport, the southern limit of St. Vincent and the Grenadines controlled airspace,” the Civil Aviation Department in Kingstown said in a statement at the time.
The statement said that after the transfer, radio contact with the aircraft was lost, and it subsequently failed to arrive at its intended destination.
“This prompted an alert, followed by the initiation of a distress phase. Search and Rescue operations for the missing aircraft are currently ongoing,” the statement said.
Law enforcement officials have remained largely silent on the case amidst an intense investigation, sources have told iWitness News.
However, Minister of National Security, St. Clair Leacock, has said that the aircraft had been found and no lives were lost, but gave no further details.
The national security minister described the situation as a “very delicate security matter”, insisting he was constrained in what he could disclose publicly.
Leacock said that although the public was understandably anxious for details, his office must balance transparency with operational security.
“I, out of professional duties and responsibilities, cannot at this time provide the public with more details as to what is happening in this very delicate security matter,” he said.
Data publicly available on the internet showed that the aircraft had flown a round trip between Canouan and AIA on June 10 — two days before it “disappeared”.
Further, on June 12, the plane had initially flown from Canouan to AIA before “disappearing” while on its way to Tobago.
It was the second incident of its kind since 2023.
On Dec. 22, 2023, a two-engine, 21-seat Gulfstream aircraft, registration number N337LR, departed Canouan in the Southern Grenadines at 2:27 p.m. on “a sightseeing excursion”.
The aircraft had three passengers and the pilot on board and was expected to return to Canouan at 4:27 p.m. that same day.
The pilot’s final contact with the tower occurred at 2:33 p.m, “marking the onset of an inexplicable loss of all subsequent contact”. The aircraft turned up in Africa sometime later.
Ralph Gonsalves, who was prime minister and minister of national security at the time, said information from regional and international agencies suggested that the aeroplane may have turned off its transponder.
He said that Vincentian authorities have been in touch with “two Latin American countries of relevance on the matter with certain information.
Then, in December 2023, Gonsalves said nothing came off or went onto a private jet that police intercepted and searched in Canouan on Nov. 25 that year, after it arrived from the Dominican Republic.
Gonsalves said that police searched the Gulfstream III jet — N674JM — based on “intelligence”.
“This plane departed to St. Vincent from the Dominican Republic; we had the intelligence that the plane was coming. The intelligence suggested that it was bound for Argyle but that might have been an error in the source of intelligence,” he then prime minister had said on radio, referring to the international airport on the east coast of St. Vincent.
“When we knew that it was going to Canouan, the security forces were mobilised and two or three persons on the plane had reservations to stay at Soho house, I was advised, in Canouan,” the then-PM had said.
