A Virginia Beach police officer who shot and killed a man did not make his bodycam work, police said
“The officer was wearing a bodycam, but for unknown reasons at the moment, he was not working,” Virginia Beach police chief Paul Neudigate told a news conference on Saturday night.
Virginia State police have not released a police officer who fired a shotgun that killed Donovan Lynch, a 25-year-old black man.
“I do not have the answers that the public is looking for in this case,” said Neudigate. He said they had not yet spoken to a police officer involved in the incident and did not know why the camera was not turned on.
Lynch was killed in a 300 block on 20 Street, which is close to where Deshayla Harris, 28, died in a separate shooting, according to police.
The king dismissed reports that Lynch was unarmed, saying, “All I can tell you is that a firearm was found near the scene.”
Two people have been identified as killed in Virginia Beach.
A police officer involved in the shooting death of the man was given administrative duties during the investigation, which is the norm, according to police.
The Commonwealth Attorney General’s Office is investigating the incident with Virginia Beach police, but Neudigate said there were no plans to ask Virginia State police to conduct an independent investigation.
Three different shots
Ten people were injured in the shooting, including the two, in three separate shootings on Friday in Virginia Beach, police said.
Three people have been arrested in connection with the first shooting, unrelated to the two shootings that killed Lynch and Harris, police said.
The shooting appeared to have been sparked by an altercation between people on Atlantic Avenue, police told reporters on Saturday afternoon.
“We now know that that started as a physical fight, an argument and a fight, which later ended up with a gunshot wound,” Neudigate said.
Three men, aged 22, 20, and 18, were arrested and charged with seven counts of assault, possession of a firearm in connection with a crime and negligence in connection with the incident, police said. No one was killed at the scene of the first shooting on Atlantic Avenue, police said.
When police responded to an incident on Atlantic Avenue, police heard gunshots nearby and found Harris shot. He died at the scene, police said.
Neudigate said police believe Harris is “an innocent victim who may have been hit by gunfire” unrelated to the shooting of a police officer.
Nearby, the shooting incident involving Lynch happened when a plainclothes police officer “encountered an armed civilian who led to police involvement in the shooting,” according to a media source. Lynch died of his injuries at the scene, police said.
At one point while all this was going on, a VBPD officer was hit by a car, according to the eviction. The officer was treated and released from a nearby hospital.
Local hospitals in the Virginia Beach area have received ten victims of multiple gunshot wounds but it is unclear whether they include injured people who have not been shot.
Police say more police have been assigned to the Oceanfront Resort Area over the weekend.
U.S. Senator Tim Kaine, D-Virginia, said “his heart is in Virginia Beach today” on Twitter.
“I feel sick when I hear of another senseless massacre – in a society that already has the scourge of gun violence,” he said. “We cannot stand by as many families lose loved ones. It is time for Congress to fight gun violence now.”