Evaluation sought in deaths of Va. Beach couple

VIRGINIA BEACH

An attorney has requested a mental-health evaluation for the live-in grandson of a couple found strangled and beaten to death in their Windsor Woods home July 5.

Police have not charged anyone in the killings of Mary and Eugene McNeely.

The couple's grandson, Donta Jarma Brown, 35, was arrested on an unrelated drug possession charge a day after the McNeelys' bodies were discovered, according to online court records. A Circuit Court hearing in that case was postponed Tuesday pending the mental-health evaluation.

According to a search warrant affidavit filed in Circuit Court, a relative reported the last contact anyone had with the McNeelys - a telephone call on July 4 - was interrupted when Brown grabbed the phone from Mary McNeely and accused her of talking behind his back. Family members asked police to check on the McNeelys after they were unable to reach them for a day, the court document said.

Police later found Brown at a hotel, where they charged him with possession and pulling a hotel fire alarm without cause. Brown has been questioned regarding the deaths of the McNeelys, who were in their 80s, police said.

Officer Jimmy Barnes, a police spokesman, said Tuesday police are awaiting results of forensic testing in the homicides and that the investigation is ongoing.

Brown is scheduled to appear in court on the possession charge Oct. 24.