Analysis: 50 Years After Fountain Valley

A half-century ago, five gunmen strode into the Fountain Valley Golf Course, killing eight people and wounding eight more. The crime stained the tranquil image of America’s Paradise like none before, signaling an end of innocence for St. Croix, washing the Virgin Islands in the mainland’s racial and political divisions.

News coverage of the event seized on Black island men shooting white country club goers and Black employees, dubbing the Sept. 6, 1972 attack the Fountain Valley Massacre. What reporters and newsreaders around the world missed was the unique nature of race relations in the Virgin Islands, said two men who knew the alleged mastermind and primary gunman of the attack, Ishmael LaBeet.

LaBeet was a troubled Vietnam veteran trying to get his life together, they said. A quiet guy, if LaBeet were a raving gunslinger out for blood, he hid it well. He certainly did not present himself as a homicidal anti-white, anti-mainland activist.

Melwood Civil knew LaBeet from St. Croix and, by chance, found they were assigned to the same Nha Trang, Vietnam base camp for U.S. Army airborne brigades.