The discovery of the body of a teenage girl in the Belmont area on Sunday, March 24 is being treated as a homicide.

Authorities were notified of the body on Sunday morning after a resident in the community raised the alarm.

It was later confirmed that the deceased was a 17-year-old resident, Kemeisha Haynes, of Murray’s Village.

An autopsy is expected to be conducted to confirm the cause of death.

The circumstances are similar to that of the 2022 murder of Precious Williams, a resident of Walvaroo Sion Hill.

Williams’s body was found stuffed in a bag and discarded in a drain in the Richmond Hill area. Her cause of death was a stab wound to the throat.

Haynes’ death brings the number of homicides in St Vincent and the Grenadines to nine for the year and she is the third female to be killed this year. The first, was an infanticide which claimed the life of one-year-old, Janae Samuel in January.

On Valentine’s Day, a Campden Park woman, Corona Jennings was brutally stabbed to death in her yard.