Firearms Owners Against Crime
Institute for Legal, Legislative and Educational Action
Institute for Legal, Legislative and Educational Action
A 30-year-old man found shot to death inside a Newport News rooming house Saturday likely was killed by a female resident acting in self-defense, a police spokesman said Monday.
The 61-year-old woman shot the man during a dispute inside the 55th Street home at about 2 p.m., Newport News police spokesman Brandon Maynard said following an initial police investigation.
Maynard identified the man as Quintez Moore, 30, who lived in the rooming house.
“As of right now, it appears to be a self-defense shooting,” Maynard said. “There was a reported altercation between the two, which led to the shooting. … He died as a result of the shooting.”
The killing marks the city’s first homicide of 2019.
The city went two and a half months — or 77 days — since the previous one, when Larry Hartwell Vick Jr., was gunned down on 22nd Street and Oak Avenue on Dec. 22.
That’s a slow pace of killings to start a year for Newport News. There were three homicides by this point in 2018 — with 25 people slain in the city that year — and four by the same point in 2017.
The 77 days also marked the longest stretch without a homicide in the city since 2016, when then city went 108 days without a killing between mid-January and April 30. The city finished with 31 homicides that year, close to its all-time high.
Newport News Police Chief Steven Drew cautioned Monday that his investigators won’t make their final determination on the case “until we get the autopsy back,” and finish out the final interviews.
The case then will be turned over to Commonwealth’s Attorney Howard Gwynn, who will rule on whether the shooting was justified.
“If they decide it’s a criminal homicide, then we will obtain warrants and make an arrest,” Drew said. “But the information I have so far, from evidence at the scene and what I’m seeing now, is that this is going to be a justifiable homicide … It looks like it’s a strong possibility that this is going to be self-defense.”
Drew acknowledged that Saturday’s shooting meets the definition of homicide — defined as the killing of one person by another. But he said that if prosecutors deem it justified, it would not be considered a criminal act for FBI crime reporting purposes.
Under annual crime reporting rules from the FBI and Virginia State Police, police agencies and sheriff’s offices must provide their numbers on “murder and non-negligent manslaughter.” But the agencies can remove justifiable homicides from the counts once prosecutors rule on them.
Using that as a barometer, Drew said Saturday that his city’s streak of “no homicides” in 2019 might still be intact.
“If this one is justifiable and the FBI ran our numbers today, then they would say that Newport News has not had a homicide this year,” Drew explained. Or if it’s ruled justified and someone from the community asks how many homicides he’s had this year, he said, “my answer would be zero, because that’s how I report to the FBI.”
Police were called just after 2 p.m. Saturday to the two-story home in the 300 block of 55th Street, which runs between Warwick Boulevard and Huntington Avenue, near Newport News Shipbuilding. Moore was found inside the house, with medics pronouncing him dead.
It was not immediately clear what the man and woman — who Maynard said were not a couple — were arguing about. Officers at the scene initially detained the woman for questioning, but she was released without charges after investigators spoke with her and gathered more evidence.
The rooming house boards several residents who aren’t relatives, but share common areas, such as the kitchen. There was at least one other person inside the home at the time of the shooting, Maynard said.
A neighbor on 55th Street, Wanda Voyles, told a reporter Saturday that she was outside in her backyard with her dogs when she heard two gunshots. “It wasn’t a bang-bang,” Voyles said. “It was bang and a couple seconds and then another bang.”
Maynard said at the scene Saturday that even one killing is too many — and he said police are working hard to keep homicides down.
“We're taking measures and speaking with the community and getting out there and just speaking with everyone,” he said. “We're getting out of the vehicles. That’s what it takes — one-on-one communication with the community to know what's going on — and we're doing that."
https://www.dailypress.com/news/newport-news/dp-nws-newport-news-homicide-20190311-story.html