Fugitive extradited from Dominica after two-year flight from USVI

A two-year international search has concluded with the capture and extradition of Jahi Grant, 46, who fled the US Virgin Islands following a violent confrontation with police that resulted in a surveillance aircraft being disabled by gunfire.

Federal marshals located Grant in Dominica and coordinated his return. He arrived at Cyril E. King Airport on Friday, October 30, where Virgin Islands Police Department detectives and federal agents took him into custody. Grant was processed at the Richard N. Callwood Command before being moved to the Virgin Islands Bureau of Corrections. On Monday morning, he appeared before Magistrate Judge Julie Smith Todman in Superior Court on St. Thomas for his initial hearing. An arrest warrant issued in January 2025 had set bail at $175,000.

The sequence of events began on December 12, 2024, when VIPD officers attempted to stop a blue Nissan Altima traveling at high speed on Maude Proudfoot Drive. The vehicle slowed momentarily, then the driver accelerated sharply and sped toward the lower end of the road. When traffic congestion forced the car to halt again, officers approached on foot. Instead of complying, the driver steered directly toward an officer in uniform, forcing the officer to jump clear to avoid being struck.

The Altima then crashed into Jah Yard in Hospital Ground, striking a parked Jeep Cherokee before stopping. The driver exited carrying a gray backpack and gray satchel, then fled into the surrounding hillside brush. Officers recognized the fleeing suspect as Grant from previous encounters. Inside the abandoned vehicle, on the floorboard where Grant had been sitting, lay a tan and black.40-caliber pistol fitted with a polymer-80 lower grip, a Glock 24 slide, and a 15-round magazine containing one round.

Along Grant's escape route, officers recovered a backpack holding a Draco 7.62-caliber automatic rifle with an extended 60-round magazine loaded with 54 rounds plus one in the chamber. Both weapons were found within 1,000 feet of Lionel Roberts Stadium, a public recreation complex and youth facility. The gray satchel contained cash, pharmaceutical bottles with 18 small plastic bags of white powder, and a joint-health supplement bottle holding 13 rock-like white chunks. The suspected drugs were sent to the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration for testing.

When police deployed an aerial surveillance drone to search Hospital Ground, gunfire struck and disabled it. Grant evaded the perimeter search and eventually left the territory.

Grant is a convicted felon barred from possessing firearms and has never held a firearms license in the territory. He faces 13 charges: unlicensed possession of a machine gun, two counts of unlicensed firearm possession, two counts of carrying unlicensed firearms within 1,000 feet of a school or park, two counts of unlawful ammunition possession, possession with intent to distribute a controlled substance, simple possession of a controlled substance, assault and battery on a law enforcement officer, first-degree reckless endangerment, reckless driving, and obstructing or interfering with an officer performing their duty.