Man seriously injured in Newport News shooting

NEWPORT NEWS – A man was seriously injured in a shooting Wednesday night.

Police responded to the 500 block of Calla Court — on Chinkapin Trail in the Denbigh neighborhood — after a shooting was reported at 9:32 p.m. Officers found a man in a parking lot with at least one gunshot wound.

He was taken to hospital with life-threatening injuries.

Michele Canty, a resident of the apartment complex, said she was sitting on her couch when she heard “three or four gunshots” nearby, followed by the sound of a car driving away.

Canty, 49 – a former crime reporter for the Daily Press – said her first instinct was to run outside and see what was going on.

About 20 steps from Canty's front door, a man lay in the parking lot. She called 911 while she and about five other neighbors went to help the man.

Neighbors initially assumed the man – who Canty estimated was between 25 and 35 years old – had been shot in the arm. But they determined he had been shot at least twice, once on the left side of his face and once in the left abdomen.

“He was talking, but we couldn't understand him,” Canty said, adding that the man had difficulty breathing as neighbors tried to keep him conscious. At one point, a neighbor leaned over while the man was saying something and asked Canty what he said.

“Tell my daughter I love her,” the man said. Canty said the neighbor told her.

Police officers arrived relatively quickly, Canty said, and put the man on his back.

“I saw him stop breathing, but then he took a deep breath and came back,” she said.

“Who shot you?” the officers asked the man. “What's your name?”

It was not clear whether the man responded. The ambulance arrived about “five or 10 minutes” after the shooting, Canty said, and paramedics were with him in the ambulance for about 10 minutes before taking him to the hospital.

Canty said she didn't know the man and didn't recognize him from the neighborhood.

Calla Court is a cul-de-sac in the Woodscape Apartments, on Jefferson Avenue, a few miles south of Fort Eustis. Canty said crime is unusual at the apartment complex and “we've never had a shooting in the 10 years she's been there.”

Residents there typically get up early, she said, and were probably just settling in for the night at the time of the shooting.

“This is a working-class neighborhood,” Canty said, saying the complex is full of teachers, police officers, VDOT employees, retired couples and families with young children who often play outside. “We manage our business. We care about our neighbors.”

Canty's 13-year-old daughter was in her bedroom at the time of the shooting and was shocked to learn that morning that a man had been shot just outside the door.

When Canty took the girl to school that morning, janitors were outside cleaning the blood from the sidewalk, “while elementary school kids were playing tag across the street and waiting for the bus.”

The police investigation is ongoing.

Gavin Stone, 757-712-4806, [email protected]

Peter Dujardin, 757-897-2062, [email protected]