Year in Review: West Bay football stadium shooter still at large

Early 2024 found Cayman reeling from a terrifying mass shooting at the Ed Bush football stadium in West Bay on 25 Feb., in which seven people were injured.

Despite a $250,000 reward on offer, the unknown gunman who opened fire during a Cayman Islands Premier League football match is still at large. A number of arrests were made in the days and weeks following the shooting, but no one has been charged.

Spectators at the game, including families with young children, fled for the exit as the shooter ran down the touchline and fired at several people in the crowd.

One victim, who was shot three times, staggered into the tunnel and collapsed. Witnesses described him calling out, “I’ve been shot, I’ve been shot, save me,” as a medic from one of the teams worked on him.

The shooting happened close to the changing rooms, just after 9pm, as the game between Elite SC and Academy SC paused for halftime.

The shooting sent shockwaves through the entire community. Local residents told police and politicians at a district meeting in West Bay a few days later that they were now living in fear, with one resident describing the area as becoming like a “war zone”.

This was the first mass shooting in Cayman’s history, and was described at the time by Governor Jane Owen as a “watershed moment” for the islands.

In response to the shooting, Police Commissioner Kurt Walton vowed to take on the “merchants of evil” who profit from the import of guns and drugs into Cayman but stay at arm’s length from the bloodshed.

There had been around 300 people in the stadium watching the game when the shooting occurred.

Police said they believed that the shooter had been targeting two individuals, but had fired “indiscriminately” into a group of spectators watching the game towards the northeast corner of the field, with “no regard for human life”.