Beach man among ex-Xe guards charged in Afghan deaths

NORFOLK

A Virginia Beach man was arrested Thursday on murder charges stemming from an incident last year in Afghanistan, where he was working for a subsidiary of Xe, the private military company formerly known as Blackwater.

Christopher Drotleff, 29, is one of two former Xe contractors charged in the May 5 incident, in which two Afghans were killed and a third was wounded. The other former contractor, Justin Cannon, 27, was arrested in Corpus Christi, Texas, where he lives.

The murder charges come a week after a federal judge in Washington tossed out manslaughter charges against five other former Blackwater contractors who were involved in a 2007 shooting incident in Iraq.

Drotleff and Cannon are charged with second-degree murder, attempted murder and firearms offenses in the 2009 incident, which occurred while they were working for Paravant, a subsidiary of Moyock, N.C.-based Xe.

If convicted, they could be sentenced to life in prison or death.

According to the indictment, they were providing weapons training to the Afghan National Army. Paravant was working for the U.S. Defense Department as a subcontractor to Waltham, Mass.-based Raytheon Co.

According to news reports at the time, Drotleff, Cannon and two other Xe contractors were off-duty when they became involved in a traffic accident with a civilian vehicle in Kabul, the Afghan capital.

Perceiving the other vehicle as a threat, the contractors fired on it, the U.S. military said.. The Wall Street Journal quoted a person familiar with the incident as saying that at least some of the men had been drinking.

Paravant fired the men for failure to comply with the terms of their contract.

The contractors were not authorized to carry weapons, the U.S. military said.

In an interview with The Associated Press two weeks after the incident, Cannon said Xe issued them weapons despite U.S. military rules prohibiting it. The company declined to comment on the accusation.

Both men have said they were justified in opening fire on the Afghan vehicle, which they said turned and sped toward them after the accident.

"I feel comfortable firing my weapon any time I feel my life is in danger," Drotleff said in a recent interview with the AP. "That night, my life was 100 percent in danger."

Steve McClain, 25, another contractor involved in the incident, told the AP he wasn't drinking and didn't witness any of his colleagues drinking that day.

In a brief appearance in Norfolk federal court Thursday, Drotleff was ordered held without bail by Magistrate Judge F. Bradford Stillman. He asked for a court-appointed attorney.

After answering "Yes, sir" and "No, sir" to a series of questions from Stillman, he was led out in handcuffs and shackles. Stillman scheduled a detention hearing for Tuesday.

Drotleff was a mortarman in the Marine Corps from 1998 to 2001. He was discharged as a private from his last duty station with the 3rd Marine Division in Kaneohe Bay, Hawaii.

Over the past 10 years, Drotleff has had more than a dozen run-ins with Virginia Beach police, both on land and water. He apparently has no felonies on his record but has been arrested 18 times on misdemeanors, including disturbing the peace, resisting arrest, assault and battery, and twice for driving under the influence, according to Beach court records.

He spent 10 days in jail after a 2002 arrest and conviction for disturbing the peace, the court records say. A 2008 charge of disturbing the peace was dismissed.

John Hartle, who lives next door to Drotleff, said Thursday that his neighbor was known for throwing raucous parties when he and his wife first moved in.

Hartle's son, John Hartle Jr., pointed to the street where black rings had marked up the pavement. A few years ago one of the parties spilled into the street, where Drotleff and his friends did "doughnuts" on motorcycles, he said.

The parties stopped after Drotleff and his wife had two children, Hartle Sr. said.

Besides Paravant, Hartle Jr. said Drotleff had worked for a power-washing company.

The elder Hartle said he remembered Drotleff returning from Afghanistan in the spring and talking about how something had happened with another man. He didn't know any details.

Hartle Jr. said he typically discounted Drotleff's stories because he was "a bit of a yarn spinner."

Pilot writers Tim McGlone and Lauren King and The Associated Press contributed to this report.

Bill Sizemore, (757) 446-2276, bill.sizemore@pilotonline.com