‘Murder is sticky’: Mapping homicides in Hampton Roads — and understanding their toll
Every two weeks, Keara Smith collects her son’s three children from their mothers. She spends the weekends spoiling them, ordering McDonald’s happy meals from DoorDash and having cookouts and pool parties.
Smith’s son is no longer around to care for the children. Tahjaquan Littlejohn, 24, was shot and killed March 9 at a Hampton townhome.
While Smith’s time with her grandchildren is a blessing, it can also be a painful reminder. Littlejohn’s youngest, TJ, will celebrate his first birthday this month. He’s learning to talk, crawling around on Smith’s carpet and chanting “dada.” When he says it too often, Smith has to step outside to collect herself.
“I’m still grieving,” Smith said. “It isn’t gonna go away.”
Littlejohn’s killing is one of 115 homicides recorded in the region’s seven largest cities from January through June, up from 88 in the same time last year. That’s a 30% increase. While Newport News and Hampton saw declines in the first half of the year, every other city had a rise in homicides.
Continuing at this pace, Hampton Roads’ cities are on track to collectively record more homicides than the 207 killings recorded in 2021.
But the increases don’t affect each community equally.
“Murder is sticky,” said Jeff Asher, a national criminal justice data analyst at AH Datalytics. “Murder tends to happen in the same places and to the same people. ... If one of your buddies has been the victim of gun violence, it dramatically increases your likelihood.”
Whether cities saw an increase or decrease this year, the homicide statistics don’t encompass the lives of gun violence victims or the loved ones left behind. For this story, The Virginian-Pilot sought out family members of gun violence victims and spoke with residents of neighborhoods affected to understand the toll this year’s killings have taken.
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“At 9 o’clock, I’m in the house.”
Residents on Maple Avenue in Portsmouth used to sit on their porches in the evenings, trading laughter with neighbors across the street. Mostly older folks and families live on that stretch in the Prentis Park neighborhood — a block punctuated by rooming houses on either end of the street.
When four people were killed in one of those houses, those on the block started keeping to themselves, said one resident.
“At 9 o’clock, I’m in the house,” said Lynn, 61.
Lynn, who asked not to share his last name, has lived in his house for 22 years. He was visiting a son in Georgia when gunfire erupted inside a home at the intersection of Randolph Street and Maple Avenue. Three people were found dead at the scene: one man — Davonta Georgio Lee, 30; and two women — Oleisha Deanna Mears, 37, and Ashley Merricks, 34. A fourth victim, Samuel Jones, 66, died from his injuries days later.
The death toll — abnormally high in Portsmouth — made national headlines as the country grappled with a rash of mass shootings. A nearby resident told The Virginian-Pilot at the time that “it seemed like the whole police force was on Maple Street.”
The quadruple homicide contributed to a 75% increase in homicides in the city. From January through June, 21 people have been killed, compared with 12 in the same time period last year.
Portsmouth police returned en masse the next day to knock on doors, offer advice and take information. Though a suspect vehicle was identified, police have not announced an arrest.
In the days and weeks afterward, the whole thing “seems like it died,” Lynn said. “Everything died back down to what it was.”
Tre Heys, who lives in Chesapeake but regularly visits his mother in Prentis Park, expressed a similar sentiment: it happened, now it’s over. Still, he said, he sees police cars drive through the neighborhood regularly.
Portsmouth police, first responders and city officials planned a visit to the neighborhood Thursday to chat with residents about ways to bring down crime. A torrential downpour postponed the event, now tentatively rescheduled for this Thursday. A city-sponsored neighborhood cleanup is slated for Aug. 20.
City officials have started on various solutions to tackle the uptick, including welcoming a Harvard University fellow to address youth violence and distributing free doorbell cameras.
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Cities work to find solutions
Across the region, police departments have different theories as to what’s behind the violence and how best to address it.
Hampton is using data to identify trends in who is perpetuating and becoming the victim of gun violence and homicides in the city, according to police spokesperson Sgt. R.C. Williams. The city is collaborating with Harvard/Bloomberg and Johns Hopkins University for data-driven solutions, Williams wrote in an email.
“There has been speculation that increases may have been caused by the lockdown and reopening from COVID, easy access to weapons, and a wide variety of social and economic factors,” Williams said.
In Chesapeake, four of the city’s 14 homicides were determined to be justifiable, said police spokesperson Leo Kosinski. Another four were domestic in nature, prompting police to focus on domestic violence awareness.
“This is the bulk of the increase of homicides that we have experienced,” Kosinski wrote in an email. “We plan to continue to partner with members of the community to bring awareness to the dangers of domestic violence, and develop solutions.”
Of 11 homicides reported in Newport News during the first six months of 2022, six were domestic in nature, Newport News Police Chief Steve Drew said.
“Those are very, very hard to proactively deter,” Drew said. “We don’t know what’s going on inside someone’s mind or what those issues might be inside four walls of a location or residence.”
The city is focusing on combating domestic violence through educating on signs of abusive intimate partners.
Suffolk had Hampton Roads’ largest homicide percentage increase. By the end of June last year, the city recorded one homicide. This year, it had six.
“Homicides, first off, are sporadic,” Suffolk Police Chief Al Chandler said. “You have to consider the pandemic as being a factor.”
As the city reopened following the COVID-19 shutdowns in 2020, people returned to public spaces to socialize and homicides become more frequent, Chandler said.
The Norfolk Police Department is focusing on gun safety and community intervention. The city recorded 31 homicides in the first six months of this year — the most killings of the seven cities and a 13% increase over the same time last year.
“Most homicides are crimes of passion,” police spokesperson Sgt. William Pickering wrote in an email. “When this conflict is exacerbated by the easy access to illegally obtained guns, tragedies occur that lead to death and terrible losses for the families involved.”
Through theft, under-the-table sales and irresponsible gun ownership, guns end up in the wrong hands.
“We ask that residents responsibly secure their firearms, and not leave them unsecured inside of a vehicle, home, or business,” Pickering wrote.
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‘If I walk around sad, he wins.’
Sheri Johnson marks time by Tuesdays.
Her nephew, 19-year-old Jawan Johnson, was fatally shot on a Tuesday nine weeks ago, outside a Virginia Beach gas station. On each Tuesday, Johnson heads to his grave site in Colonial Grove Memorial Park to host an Instagram live video and chat with Jawan’s friends.
“I tell them, ‘This is not the life that you want. He can’t get up here and do what you are doing — so honor him,’” Johnson said.
Jawan was one of 14 people killed in Virginia Beach in the year’s first six months. The tally is double last year’s total in the same time period. That’s the second biggest uptick in homicides in Hampton Roads.
Johnson hasn’t had much time to grieve. She’s been busy making sure her nephew isn’t forgotten, setting plans into motion for a school supply drive, a gala for families of gun violence victims and a scholarship — all in her nephew’s name. Her Virginia Beach home overflows with regular visitors, including Jawan’s friends and former teammates who stop by daily to make TikTok videos and reminisce with Sheri’s daughters.
Johnson has since found herself buying items in threes — Jawan’s football jersey number — and always wearing red and black, his favorite colors. Her fingernails are painted red, too, with “JAWAN” spelled out on either ring finger.
At a Virginia Beach City Council meeting last month, Johnson was joined by other families of gun violence victims to speak about their loss and the handling of Jawan’s case by Virginia Beach police. She plans to show up again at the council meeting Tuesday — and to keep appearing after that.
“It is hard, but if I walk around sad, (the gunman) wins. If I be quiet, he wins. If I don’t fight for my nephew, he wins,” Johnson said. “He’s not going to win on my watch.”
The advocacy work is familiar to Johnson. She founded a nonprofit organization with an office in Virginia Beach two years ago, called Giving with A Golden Hand, to provide free resources, such as food and diapers, to people who need them.
Jawan would help around the office, often perched at the front desk to check people in. When Jawan was killed, Johnson didn’t return to the office until late June. Her nephew’s tabs were still open on the front desk computer.
“That broke me,” she said.
No one has been arrested in connection with the killing, though police said in the initial aftermath that the shooter was “known.”
Virginia Beach police chief Paul Neudigate attributes the increase in homicides to a series of related killings in March and a spike in domestic-related homicides at the beginning of the year. Despite more deaths, there’s been a decrease in violent crime in Virginia Beach, Neudigate said, citing a decrease in nonfatal shootings and aggravated assault this year.
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A larger trend
Hampton Roads isn’t unique in experiencing a spike in homicides. Reported killings have been rising across the state and country following a decades-long drop-off in crime across the board. The nationwide homicide rate peaked most recently in the 1990s, according to crime data published by the FBI, before falling through the 2010s.
The number of homicides rose by 30% nationally in 2020, to 21,570 slayings — the largest one-year jump since the FBI began keeping records. From 2020 to 2021, homicides in Virginia rose by 6.4%, according to crime data released annually by Virginia State Police. From 2019 to 2020, the number of reported homicides was 528, up 23% from the prior year’s 428 homicides.
The unprecedented national uptick in 2020 might have been due to a decrease in police legitimacy following George Floyd’s murder and increased firearm sales early in the pandemic, said Asher, noting both factors are still at play. Factors such as lack of education and employment opportunities, as well as mass incarceration, also contribute to the “disease” of gun violence, Asher said.
For residents in communities with very few resources, possessing a gun offers a way to feel empowered, said Cassandra Newby-Alexander, a history professor and dean at Norfolk State University.
“In so many ways, we’ve created a system that gives people very few choices, and then we blame them for not choosing another path that wasn’t even available to them,” Newby-Alexander said.
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A constant reminder
The first and last thing on Smith’s mind every day is her son.
A shrine of childhood and graduation photos, Army certifications and a DVD of his first wrestling match are nestled in the closet across from Smith’s bed. In the center is a purple metal urn, small enough to fit in Smith’s hands. She could only bare to open the seal once, to spread her son’s ashes at Buckroe Beach — a favorite spot of his.
Littlejohn’s shooting has torn some parts of the family apart. The townhome where he was killed was owned by his father’s wife. Smith doesn’t speak with the townhouse owners anymore. She has tried to keep the rest of the family close.
In the her worst moments of grief, Smith says she’s contemplated suicide. But the idea that Littlejohn’s killer is free haunts Smith and she said that keeps her here.
“I would be gone, and my son’s killer would still be up and moving like he’s doing today,” Smith said.
After the shooting, Smith called the Hampton Police Department every week looking for updates. She last heard from the police three months ago. Smith believes the only way someone will be arrested for the homicide of her son is if the perpetrator turns themself in.
“You can’t forget stuff like that, never,” she said. “Close your eyes, that’s what you dream about. What you could have done or what you could have said. I would have jumped in front of the bullet for him.”
Lianna Hubbard, lianna.hubbard@virginiamedia.com
Lauren Girgis, lauren.girgis@virginiamedia.com
Ali Sullivan, ali.sullivan@virginiamedia.com
