Man shot, killed by Newport News police officer during pursuit, official says

UPDATE – 4:20 p.m.: The officer who shot and killed a man early Saturday morning is a narcotics detective and a veteran of the force, Newport News Police Chief Richard Myers said at a press conference Saturday afternoon.

However, he said the investigations into the shooting would take time and he thanked the community for their patience and calm.

“We have to strike that balance with being proactive and transparent but we want to be accurate and factual and that takes time,” Myers said.

Myers told the press that the detective was working a uniformed extra duty shift, providing additional security at the Stuart Gardens housing complex in Southeast Newport News Friday night.

He received information from “a well-known and trusted source” that a specific individual – 23-year-old Kawanza Beaty – was armed with a sawed-off shotgun.

This was the second time in the last couple of days that police had received information about Beaty being armed, Myers said. A day or two before the incident, Myers said a different group of police searched Beaty and a residence for a firearm but didn’t find one.

This time, the detective radioed for backup. No patrol officers were available, which isn’t unusual for the time of day and it being overnight between Friday and Saturday, Myers said.

Instead, a K9 officer and a patrol sergeant with the southern precinct responded.

Myers said the officers talked about how to approach Beaty, then saw him with someone at the corner of Oak Avenue and 18th Street.

According to Myers, he started to walk away when officers got out of their vehicles and ignored their calls that he stop and that they needed to talk to him.

Myers said Beaty began to run in the direction of the Peterson Yacht Basin and the officers gave chase. At some point, Beaty turned and officers reported seeing the shotgun, Myers said.

Officers shouted at him to drop the weapon – which Myers said was corroborated by a witness who heard the shouting but didn’t see the incident. The narcotics detective fired three rounds, at least one of which hit Beaty, Myers said.

Paramedics pronounced Beaty dead when they arrived at the scene. “He was not transported to the hospital due to the absence of any signs of life and the nature of the injury,” Myers said.

He declined to comment on where the man had been shot, saying it was the medical examiner’s job now to determine how many times he had been shot and where.

While the majority of south precinct patrol officers have body cameras, none of those involved in the incident were equipped and the department doesn’t have many dashboard cameras in the fleet.

“In today’s society it’s tough to go anywhere without someone’s camera picking you up. We’re not aware of any video at this point,” Myers said. “It would be great to stand here and tell you at least one of the officers on scene had a body camera but that’s not the case.”

He said the body camera rollout is on track and more than half of the city’s patrol officers have them, including most of those working in the southern precinct. However, these weren’t patrol officers, he said.

It’s likely one of them would have a camera if this incident happened at this time next year, but the distribution has slowed since demand for the body cameras has skyrocketed nationwide.

The shotgun recovered at the scene was reported stolen in a burglary in an adjoining jurisdiction, Myers said. NNPD will request assistance from the federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms in tracking and gathering information about the shotgun.

Myers said the police department would fully cooperate with the commonwealth’s attorney’s office on the investigation into the incident.

The department had reached out early this morning to several pastors of churches in the Southeast area and the regional NAACP chapter president, Myers said.

Original: Police shot and killed a 23-year-old man overnight Saturday in the Southeast Community of Newport News, according to a department spokesman.

Police have identified the man who had been shot as Kawanza Jamal Beaty of the 1100 block of Garden Drive in Newport News.

The incident took place about 2 a.m. near 18th Street and Peterson Place where police received a report of a man armed with a shotgun, Newport News Police spokesman Lou Thurston said in a news release.

The officers approached Beaty on foot and were not immediately able to see a weapon, according to Thurston. Beaty then took off running and police pursued, he said.

At some point, Beaty rounded on the officers and pointed a sawed-off shotgun at them, Thurston said.

One officer fired his weapon, striking Beaty. The shotgun was recovered at the scene, according to police.

Three officers have been placed on administrative leave during the investigations. No officers were injured.

Police have not yet disclosed details about the officer who shot Beaty, but Thurston said he was “shook up” Saturday morning.

“None of us come to work wanting to hurt anybody,” he said.

Police are conducting internal and criminal investigations, both of which are ongoing, according to Thurston. None of the officers were wearing body cameras and there is no squad car footage of the incident, he said.

More details were expected to be unveiled at a police press conference, slated at 2 p.m. Saturday.

A crowd of more than 20 friends and family gathered at the scene Saturday morning expressing shock and frustration. Some said they don’t believe what police said happened.

Beaty’s mother, Melisa Dargan, said police told her they got a call about a man walking with a shotgun early in the morning, but she doesn’t believe her son was armed.

“He had just left his baby-mama’s house … why wouldn’t she have seen a shotgun?” she asked. Beaty’s girlfriend is three months pregnant.

James Sykes, who identified himself as Beaty’s brother, said Beaty was the type of person who was always helping others. He always kept his word.

“He was laid back. He was one of the realist people I know,” Sykes said.

Beaty’s uncle, Robert Mizel, said Beaty was trying to find a job, get his life together, before his child arrived. He babysat children in the neighborhood while he was looking for work, Mizel said. Beaty moved down to Georgia for a while, but moved back to the Southeast Community, where he grew up.

“He came back home to get on his feet,” he said.

Another uncle, Jermain McPhatten, said he felt race had played a part in the shooting, that Beaty may have been profiled unfairly, and that the Southeast community isn’t well-served by police.

“You put cops in an urban community that don’t understand urban people,” he said. “I used to feel safe around police, but now I don’t because we don’t trust them.”

The races of the officers had not been made public Saturday morning.

Newport News Police Chief Richard Myers and Southern Precinct Captain Eric Randall were both on the scene Saturday morning.

Meyers was brought in as the interim police chief in Sanford, Fla., in 2012 to oversee the investigation into the handling of the shooting death of Trayvon Martin.

Martin, an unarmed, black 17-year-old, was shot and killed by neighborhood watch member George Zimmerman, who was acquitted of manslaughter in the shooting in 2013.

That case and recent, high-profile deaths of black men by police officers – like Michael Brown’s shooting in Ferguson, Mo., and Freddie Gray’s death in Baltimore, Md. – have brought race relations and profiling to the fore of a national conversation on police shootings.

Myers took the helm at NNPD in December 2013.

This is the second officer-involved shooting on the Peninsula in as many weeks.

A York-Poquoson Sheriff’s Office deputy shot and killed Damien A. Harrell on June 24 after the Newport News man pulled a gun on the deputy.

The incident happened along the York County section of Fort Eustis Boulevard near Richneck Road.

Video from the deputy’s body camera, provided by the sheriff’s department during a press conference, shows Harrell reaching to his right side and pulling out a handgun.

The deputy then fired six shots, hitting Harrell at least twice in the upper torso, officials said.

Check with the Daily Press throughout the day as more details about this incident become available.