Rayshawn Charlery stands on a dock in Saint Lucia, his heavy-lidded eyes looking out at the colourful Caribbean fishing boats dotting the bay. He last saw his father, fisherman Joseph “Nathy” William, a week before his disappearance in February. On February 13, William went fishing with Ricky Joseph, a father of four.
Charlery could no longer reach his father. That same day, the United States military released black-and-white drone footage of a strike on a small vessel in the Caribbean Sea, saying it had killed suspected narcotics traffickers. Charlery has doubts about that account.
He fears the slender boat may have been a fishing vessel – namely, the one his father was using the day he went missing. His father, he says, was not a drug smuggler. Since September 2, 2025, the administration of President Donald Trump has carried out dozens of bombings against unidentified vessels in the Caribbean and the Eastern Pacific, killing more than 220 people it labels as “narcoterrorists”.
In each case, there has been no court filing, no trial and no public effort to identify the victims. For families like Charlery’s, there have only been images of smoke, silence and the sea. Experts say the strikes likely amount to extrajudicial killings, which are illegal under international law.
Fault Lines investigated the cases of three missing fishermen and spoke to the families they left behind to offer a window into the human cost of a campaign carried out with little transparency or accountability. Other families that Fault Lines approached would not speak publicly, for fear of repercussions. Like Charlery, Ricky Joseph’s family also tried to contact him but could not reach him.
Other fishermen sent Titus Joseph, his brother, videos of boat wreckage circulating online. Titus instinctively knew whose vessel it was. Ricky often supported his family with the few thousand dollars he earned from fishing each year, according to his partner Lucillia Charles.
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