Saturday, 28 Sep 2024

Virginia Beach Shooting: 12 Victims Identified in Government Office Attack

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.

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.

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.

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.

[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.”

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.

The other victim, Herbert Snelling, was a contractor who was at the city government’s vast campus of office buildings to file a permit.

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.

“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.”

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.”

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.

“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.”

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.

“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.

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.

Additional weapons were found at the scene and at the suspect’s home, though officials did not specify what kind.

The attack ranks among the deadliest workplace shootings in the United States in recent years.

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.

But many workplace killings happen under far different circumstances, like robbery or domestic violence, than Friday’s shooting apparently did.

[Read more about the attack in Virginia Beach.]

The vast complex where the attack took place was quiet on Saturday morning.

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.

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.

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.

Sandra E. Garcia and Mark S. Getzfred contributed reporting from New York.

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