Suffolk shooting not necessarily OK under Va. law

SUFFOLK

Charles Duck opened the door of his White Marsh Road home on Wednesday, supporting himself with crutches.

A week ago today, he'd just come home from the hospital. Shortly before 3 a.m., police said, Duck saw a man trying to load a dog box from Duck's lawn into a pickup.

Duck got his gun, went to the window, and yelled at the man to move to the front of his vehicle. Instead, he jumped into the passenger side of his pickup, and Duck, a retired Suffolk police officer, started shooting, police said.

"I just got out of surgery the day before this happened," Duck said Wednesday, adding that he suffers from poor blood circulation. He pointed to a scar that runs the length of the inside of his left arm.

The man, whom police identified as 20-year-old Quamaine L. Lassiter, showed up at Sentara Obici Hospital at 3 a.m. saying he had been shot by someone in a passing vehicle as he was walking on Lake Kennedy Drive. Police later found the pickup on Oak Street.

Lassiter had a minor bullet wound in the head, and he was later taken to Sentara Norfolk General Hospital and was released.

Duck had been a city cop for 20 years when he retired in 2005, and the former police chief described him as someone with a gift for sizing up criminal activity. Now, his former colleagues are investigating him. No charges have been filed against Duck or Lassiter.

Several law professors contacted this week say the law could allow for Duck to be prosecuted. "In Virginia, you do not have the right to use deadly force to merely protect property or to evict that trespasser," said Darryl Brown, a professor at the University of Virginia Law School.

Duck declined to talk about what happened.

"My house, my property," he said.

The brick home sits on an unfenced yard with an open field on one side and a home on the other.

William Freeman, Suffolk's former police chief who retired in 2008, said Duck was a good officer who had worked in patrol and in the special investigations unit. Freeman worked with Duck in the unit, doing drug investigations and anything uniform patrol didn't have time to do. That was in the 1990s.

"Duck had an uncanny ability to be able to evaluate what he saw and make a decision as to whether it was involving some kind of criminal activity," Freeman said.

Freeman said he couldn't pass judgment on what happened the night Duck faced the intruder on his property.

"I'm not privy to all of the information," he said. "That's why we have to rely on those institutions that are there to evaluate all of the factual information."

Suffolk's spokeswoman did not comment further about the investigation Wednesday.

This case is similar to one from 2009, when a store owner shot and killed a burglar who had broken into his store, J&L Food Mart in Whaleyville.

Commonwealth's Attorney Phil Ferguson declined to prosecute the store's owner, James H. Durden Jr., saying the store owner believed his life was in danger.

Associate Professor David Velloney, who teaches at Regent University Law School in Virginia Beach, said a person may protect property through other means that aren't life-threatening.

"If someone is stealing my prized lawn mower or stealing something off of my property, I can run out there and pull them back and push them down," he said. "I can't exercise my right to kill someone just because they're taking my things," Velloney said.

Veronica Gonzalez, (757) 222-5208, veronica.gonzalez@pilotonline.com