This article is from the source 'nytimes' and was first published or seen on . It last changed over 40 days ago and won't be checked again for changes.

You can find the current article at its original source at https://www.nytimes.com/2019/06/01/us/virginia-beach-shooting.html

The article has changed 8 times. There is an RSS feed of changes available.

Version 4 Version 5
Virginia Beach Shooting: 12 Victims Identified in Government Office Attack Virginia Beach Shooting: 12 Victims Identified in Government Office Attack
(about 5 hours later)
VIRGINIA BEACH — The Virginia authorities on Saturday identified the dozen victims of a shooting rampage at a government office complex and named the suspect in the attack for the first — and they said only — time. VIRGINIA BEACH — Eleven of them were civil servants, the kind of people who worked on construction projects and water quality and right-of-way issues. Another was a local contractor who had come by for a permit.
Most of the victims, city officials said, worked for the Virginia Beach government, several of them for decades. The police chief, James A. Cervera, said the suspect in the attack, DeWayne Craddock, had also been a municipal employee for about 15 years. Between them, they had more than 150 years of experience helping to make Virginia’s largest city work — the unelected, behind-the-scenes figures who drew up plans, issued permits and performed the vital jobs that help keep a community intact. And on Friday, their lives ended with a man’s barrage of bullets in a three-floor surge of terror that once again pushed the nation’s death toll from mass shootings higher.
Chief Cervera, speaking at a news conference on Saturday morning, said he did not intend to say the name of the suspect, who was killed on Friday, again in public. “Today, we all grieve,” said David L. Hansen, the Virginia Beach city manager. “I have worked with most of them for many years. We want you to know who they were, so in the days and weeks to come, you will learn what they meant to all of us.”
He declined to discuss a possible motive for the attack, which he said left “a horrific crime scene” and provoked “a long-term, large gunfight” with police officers who responded to the Virginia Beach Municipal Center. He then began a grim, halting roll call of the dead. He started with LaQuita Brown, and he ended with Herbert Snelling. It lasted nearly three minutes.
Only after the last name was read did Mr. Hansen pause and ask the police chief to talk about “that 13th person,” the 15-year city employee who opened fire in Building No. 2. Chief James A. Cervera identified the dead suspect, DeWayne Craddock, and said it would be “the only time we will announce his name.”
[What we know about the gunman.][What we know about the gunman.]
City Manager David L. Hansen said that Mr. Craddock was still employed by the city at the time of the “senseless and incomprehensible” shooting on Friday afternoon and that he had been “authorized to enter the building.” So as state troopers stood guard and F.B.I. agents in cargo pants collected evidence at the Virginia Beach Municipal Center on Saturday, the city was left to take stock of those it had so suddenly lost.
All but one of the 12 victims were city employees. The authorities identified them as Laquita C. Brown, Tara Welch Gallagher, Mary Louise Gayle, Alexander Mikhail Gusev, Katherine A. Nixon, Richard H. Nettleton, Christopher Kelly Rapp, Ryan Keith Cox, Joshua A. Hardy, Michelle “Missy” Langer and Robert Williams. There was Alexander Mikhail Gusev, an immigrant from Belarus who had worked as a right of way agent and had been with the city for more than nine years. Before the gunfire, he had planned to spend Friday evening with his twin brother, repairing a property in nearby Portsmouth.
The other victim, Herbert Snelling, was a contractor who was at the city government’s vast campus of office buildings to file a permit. “It was getting late, so I called him and, you know, there was no answer,” said Aliaksei Huseu, standing in the doorway of his brother’s rowhouse on Saturday morning. “He was a hard worker, but he liked fun. He would act a little bit like the fool just to make everybody smile. Everybody’s crying. I’m not. I have a lot of thoughts in my head, but I’m not crying. I don’t know why.”
One of the victims, Ms. Gayle, had worked for the city for decades and reached a sweet spot in her life, friends and neighbors said. She had been looking forward to receiving a free day at a spa, as a reward for her work in the right-of-way section of the public utilities division. Mary Louise Gayle had worked for the city for more than 24 years and reached a sweet spot in her life, friends and neighbors said. She had been looking forward to receiving a free day at a spa, a reward for her work in the right-of-way section of the public utilities division.
“She was a super sweet lady; she always had this big smile,” said her next-door neighbor John Cushman, 33, a firefighter for the nearby city of Portsmouth, Va. “She would always be out there in the yard, working on something and talking to my daughters.” Ms. Gayle, a single mother in her 60s who had raised a son and daughter on her own, was known in the neighborhood for spending hours working in the yard of her meticulously maintained ranch house a few miles from work. She had recently pulled down a dying pine tree, and replaced it with a pair of azalea bushes — which were starting to flower in front of her empty house on Saturday.
Mr. Cushman paused when asked what he planned to tell his daughters, ages 2 and 4. “I won’t,” he said. “They are too young.” “She was a super sweet lady; she always had this big smile,” said her next-door neighbor John Cushman, 33, a firefighter in Portsmouth. “She would always be out there in the yard, working on something and talking to my daughters.”
On Saturday morning, Ervin Cox Jr., 52, was at his parent’s house thinking about his younger brother, Ryan Keith Cox, 50, who was killed on Friday. Ryan Keith Cox had lately been dividing his time between his work as an account clerk and his preparations for his first sermon.
“This is hard. It hurts, it hurts deep,” Mr. Cox said. “Just to have such a senseless thing done to take his life, to take him away from us.” Recently he felt “the Lord called him to preach,” his brother said, and wanted to follow his father, who has been a pastor for 56 years. “He felt that it was time,” said Ervin Cox Jr., Mr. Cox’s older brother.
His brother, whom the family called Keith, had been an account clerk for the city of Virginia Beach. His father had been a longtime pastor, and recently, he too had felt the divine call to preach, Ervin Cox said, and had been preparing his first sermon. “He felt that it was time,” Mr. Cox said. “This is hard. It hurts, it hurts deep,” Ervin Cox said Saturday.
“He was just that caring, loving person that just cared about everybody and wanted to help everybody. He was like that at home and at church,” he added. And there was Ms. Brown, a Jehovah’s Witness who was a native of this coastal shipbuilding region. She was already fluent in French, and was learning Japanese and sign language so she could spread her faith.
There was no immediate indication that Mr. Craddock targeted anyone in particular, officials said, and four people were in serious condition on Saturday. Once Mr. Craddock began shooting, he continued to fire throughout the building. “That’s my heart, that’s my first born,” her father, Dwight G. Brown Sr., said as he began to cry. “I have two kids; now I only have a son. This is devastating.”
Additional weapons were found at the scene and at the suspect’s home, though officials did not specify what kind. The city identified each of the other victims: Tara Welch Gallagher, an engineer; Katherine A. Nixon, an engineer who spent more than a decade working for Virginia Beach; Richard H. Nettleton, a 28-year veteran of city government who served alongside Mr. Hansen in the Army; Christopher Kelly Rapp, who joined the municipal government less than a year ago; Joshua O. Hardy, an engineering technician; Michelle Langer, known as Missy, who was an administrative assistant; Robert Williams, a Public Utilities Department employee for 41 years; and Mr. Snelling, a contractor.
The attack ranks among the deadliest workplace shootings in the United States in recent years. At least three more people were listed in critical condition at local hospitals on Saturday.
In 2017, the most recent year for which data is available, there were 458 work-related homicides, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. That was a slight decrease from 2012, when there were 475 workplace homicides. Relatives of the dead learned the extent of the carnage early on Saturday morning, Mr. Cox said, when they were told at a middle school who had died.
But many workplace killings happen under far different circumstances, like robbery or domestic violence, than Friday’s shooting apparently did. “Just to have such a senseless thing done to take his life, to take him away from us,” Mr. Cox said.
There was no immediate indication that the gunman targeted specific people, many of whom he had worked alongside. City officials would not discuss the suspect or his work history, but they said that he was an employee at the time of the attack, that he had held a security access card and that he had been “authorized” to be where he was.
Two handguns found on the suspect were purchased legally in 2016 and 2018, Chief Cervera said. And federal officials said that two other weapons were found during a search of the gunman’s apartment; at least one had been purchased legally.
A person familiar with the investigation, who was not authorized to speak publicly, said that the gunman had no record of workplace behavioral problems until recently, when he got into physical “scuffles” with other employees, including a violent altercation that he was told would lead to discipline.
Chief Cervera refused to discuss a possible motive for the attack, which he said left “a horrific crime scene” and provoked “a long-term, large gunfight” with police officers who responded to 911 calls. Once the suspect began firing, the chief said, he kept shooting.
Although there are hundreds of workplace-related homicides a year, according to federal government data, most happen under far different circumstances, like robbery or domestic violence.
[Read more about the attack in Virginia Beach.][Read more about the attack in Virginia Beach.]
The vast complex where the attack took place was quiet on Saturday morning. Gov. Ralph Northam, who attended a vigil on Saturday outside a Virginia Beach movie theater, said in an interview that he would pursue gun control measures “in upcoming days.”
Under an overcast sky and behind yellow crime scene tape that stretched hundreds of yards, F.B.I. agents walked toward the building where the gunfire erupted on Friday afternoon. State troopers enforced a perimeter, the flashing blue lights of their cars visible more than a mile down Princess Anne Road. “There are things we can do as governor,” said Mr. Northam, a Democrat who formerly practiced medicine a short drive away in Norfolk.
Down the street from the crime scene, the kitchen manager and volunteers at Courthouse Community United Methodist Church prepared lunch to bring to law enforcement officials. The vigil drew a handful of city employees, some of whom stood in the crowd and were overcome with emotion. A man, dressed in a white button-down shirt with the city government’s logo, received hugs as faith leaders sang, backed by acoustic guitars.
Rev. Beth Anderson, the pastor, said she was organizing two vigils on Monday at her church, which officials had used to reunite families after the shooting on Friday. He turned to leave.
“It’s just too much,” he said.
By then, cul-de-sacs and streets around the area were filled with cars as family members and friends gathered at the homes of the dead. At Mr. Snelling’s home, where a patriotic wreath hung a few feet above a sign that read “God shed his grace on thee,” tearful neighbors hurried past an R.V. that was parked in the driveway.
And Mr. Cushman, the neighbor of Ms. Gayle who recalled how she would speak to his 2- and 4-year-old daughters, paused when he considered how he would tell them.
“I won’t,” he said. “They are too young.”