By Peter Dujardin
Source Daily Press
A man wielding a baseball bat was shot and seriously wounded by Hampton police Tuesday morning outside a Coliseum-area car dealership after he struck an officer in the head with the bat, police said.
Officers responded at 11:04 a.m. to a call about “a disorderly subject armed with a bat” at Wynne Ford, a dealership in the 1000 block of West Mercury Blvd., said Sgt. Reggie Williams.
“The complainant said that there was a man on the parking lot who had a baseball bat,” Hampton Police Department Chief Mark Talbot said at an afternoon press conference livestreamed by the department. “The man was known to the people at the business.”
Based on their prior interactions, Talbot said, “they locked the doors of the business, and they retreated to the back of the business where they were out of sight. The female who called us said that she needed us to arrive quickly. She was clearly very afraid.”
The arriving officers spoke with the 30-year-old man, “and he refused to put the baseball bat down.” After a few minutes, Talbot said, they called for a supervisor, a sergeant with 20 years with the Hampton police.
“The sergeant began to try to de-escalate,” said Talbot, who had reviewed body camera footage from the incident. “She spoke to the male in a very calm voice. Trying to encourage him to put down the baseball bat. Over and over again. She made no threats.”
The man wasn’t saying anything in response, Talbot said, but at one point “moved the bat in what appeared to be a threatening manner,” and then “swung the bat and struck the sergeant in the head with the baseball bat.”
Another Hampton police officer, who’s been with the force since 2019, then shot the man. Talbot declined to say how many rounds he fired.
“Both were injured, severely,” Talbot said.
Officers performed CPR on the man before Hampton Fire Department medics arrived, Williams said. He was taken to a hospital and was listed in critical condition Tuesday afternoon.
The sergeant was being treated at the hospital for injuries that were serious but not considered life-threatening.
“The female sergeant did her job. And she did it very well and made all of us here proud,” Talobot said. “It’s a tragedy for all involved.”
The chief said he visited the sergeant in the hospital Tuesday afternoon. “She said to me, ‘I just wanted everybody to get home safely, including the man with the baseball bat,’” the chief said.
Talbot said the police didn’t know if the man was suffering from a mental health crisis, with nothing to indicate that he was.
The man and the officer who shot him are both Black, and the female sergeant is white, Talbot said.
The shooting took place near Wynne Ford’s front entrance on a six-lane section of Mercury Boulevard that ranks as one of the city’s busiest thoroughfares. Shortly after noon, police investigators marked evidence as early afternoon traffic passed about 50 feet away, and other cars pulled through a Wendy’s restaurant next door.
The officers were wearing activated body cameras at the time of the shooting, which Talbot said he reviewed Tuesday afternoon. It was not immediately clear if the Ford dealership had surveillance footage of the incident.
This is the second time in the past 10 years in which Hampton police shot a man who officers said was threatening them with a bat.
In July 2012, police got numerous calls that a man was hitting cars with a bat near Pembroke Avenue and King Street. The man, Bryant Weiford, 26, also struck an unmarked police car at a traffic light. Two officers shot and killed Weiford after they said he charged at them with the bat.
Hampton Commonwealth’s Attorney Anton Bell ruled the shooting justified in 2013, citing Virginia case law that “a baseball bat is a deadly weapon,” and saying that Weiford was “an immediate threat.”
At the time, Rudy Langford, the now-late leader of the Coalition for Justice for Civil Rights, questioned why deadly force was used, and fought unsuccessfully for a special grand jury to be empaneled. A psychiatric report for a 2009 malicious wounding sentencing said Weiford had a long history of mental illness.
In Monday’s shooting, Talbot said the case would be thoroughly reviewed for policies and procedures, and that Bell would rule on whether the shooting was justified. The officers are on administrative leave with pay while the investigation proceeds.
Reporter Lyndon German contributed to this report.
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