Many homicides end with the killer running off into the cover of night, and would-be witnesses telling police they didn’t see or hear a thing.
Then there’s the case of Laratio Lorenzo Dantzler.
When Dantzler, 34, killed two men in broad daylight on Wickham Avenue near 14th Street on Jan. 14, 2016, three pieces of evidence — video surveillance footage, a neighbor’s 911 call and a recording from a police officer’s body camera — combined to give a clear picture of the crime.
A private investigator working for the Newport News shipyard’s workers compensation insurance firm — looking for evidence that a shipyard worker was faking a disability claim — just happened to be down the block.
That investigator, Jason Gilliam, heard a minivan crash into a parked pickup truck. From inside his work vehicle, he then turned his high-tech video camera toward the ensuing commotion, zooming in and panning from side to side as needed.
That footage, which began rolling just after 11:02 a.m., captures a robbery in progress, with two men holding another man at gunpoint outside the crashed van, while another victim remained in the vehicle. All four men are back in the van by 11:04 a.m.
One of the robbers then gets out of the van and scurries away. Then, at 11:05 a.m., one of the men — later determined to be Dantzler — leans into the vehicle, appears to shoot into it, then runs away holding a black handgun.
Police investigators say he fired a total of 13 rounds into two pinned men, Ca’dre Antwoine Gray, 38, of Norfolk, and Quinton Antonio Kelly, 30, of Newport News, killing them both.
As police responded to the scene, Gilliam told arriving officers, “I have the whole thing on tape.”
Morever, after the van crashed minutes earlier and one of the man was being held at gunpoint outside of the vehicle, a nearby resident looking out her window called 911, giving the emergency dispatcher a live play-by-play of events.
“Oh, I hear gunshots!,” she shouted a few minutes into the call, crying and getting increasingly emotional.
She managed to give a good description of both men who fled, and where they were headed. But she said through tears that she no longer saw anyone moving in the gray van. “He shot everybody in the car,” she told the dispatcher.
That woman’s descriptions and sobs — and the silent video from the private investigator — made for a powerful combination in court.
Then there was the body camera footage from one of the responding Newport News officers, Master Police Officer Jamie Acree. (Body cameras are devices that record events while mounted to an officer’s uniform or glasses).
The camera rolled as Acree raced to the crash — speeding up her police car when the call was upgraded to a shooting. It captured radio traffic from officers trying to create a police perimeter near a “fence line” at Stuart Gardens as they searched for the two armed men. The camera also rolled as Acree encountered Dantzler.
According to trial testimony, another Newport News police officer, Sgt. Brendan Bartley, first saw and confronted Dantzler in front of a residence on Roanoke Avenue, near Stuart Gardens.
Acree’s body camera captures her hopping out of her police car and facing Dantzler in a tense standoff behind that building.
“Drop gun! Drop gun! Do it! Do it now!” she screamed loudly, before firing a single shot from about 40 yards away. “Drop it! Get on the ground! Get your hands off the gun! Take your hands off the gun!”
Dantzler — who wasn’t always completely viewable on that footage — was hit once by the bullet from Acree’s gun, having already been struck twice by bullets fired by Bartley in the front of that building.
Both officers testified at trial that Dantzler had refused orders to drop a gun before they fired.
Dantzler, with two guns found near him while he was being handcuffed, was hit twice in the abdomen and once in the shoulder. But none of the shots were fatal, and he was released from the hospital four days later.
A police detective was able to use all of the video footage to confirm Dantzler’s identity through his probation officer. Gun specialists linked a 9-mm handgun found near Dantzler to both killings, while another expert testified that Dantzler’s DNA matched DNA found on that gun.
After a three-day trial in Newport News Circuit Court, a 12-member jury deliberated for just over an hour before finding Dantzler, of Newport News, guilty of two counts of first-degree murder in the slayings of Gray and Kelly.
The jury then recommended Dantzler get two life sentences for those murders. They also said he should get 65 years on 12 attempted robbery, abduction and gun charges, and fined him $300,000 for good measure. Circuit Court Judge Timothy S. Fisher immediately imposed that sentence.
The case’s lead investigator, Newport News Master Police Officer Richard Espinoza, said that of about 200 homicide cases he’s handled in his career, this was the strongest one he’s had in terms of the evidence.
Though he’s had other cases in which business surveillance systems captured crimes, he said, “This was the first time I ever had someone who just happened to be on the block, doing something totally different, then turning toward the crime and capturing it on tape.”
“It’s very powerful evidence, and it’s very compelling evidence,” Espinoza said. “It’s undeniable. Who watches a video and doesn’t believe what they’re seeing? It’s not circumstantial. There’s no ambiguity. You’re watching it.”
Even Dantzler’s defense lawyer, Joshua Goff, acknowledged that the evidence was a lot to overcome.
“Sometimes things are caught on surveillance footage, and sometimes you have 911 callers who see things, but to have a 911 caller who is narrating a play-by-play and also have it captured on video is really kind of extraordinary,” Goff said. “It proved to be very compelling evidence for the commonwealth.”
Joseph L. Giacalone, a retired New York Police Department sergeant who once ran the cold case unit for the department’s Bronx division, says video footage is now one of the very first things detectives seek after a crime.
“Investigators are always looking for those opportunities, but in this case you end up hitting a home run by sheer luck — to have a P.I. out there,” said Giacalone, who’s been an adjunct professor at the John Jay College of Criminal Justice in New York since 2012. “For investigative purposes, (video) is one of the greatest things that we can have. It’s actually giddy for an investigator. You’re like a school kid. It’s like Christmas morning, getting a video like that.”
Not only can video evidence home in on a suspect and save investigators countless hours, he said, but it also works well with a jury.
“We are visual people,” Giacalone said. “We like seeing things on video. …Your jurors are out there, they’re watching ‘CSI Miami.’ They almost demand these things now. … And it’s direct evidence. It is what it is. We saw you point the gun at the guy and shoot. There’s no, sense of, ‘Oh, it wasn’t me,’ or some sort of circumstantial evidence where you have to make an inference.”
The quality of such footage has improved sharply over the years, too. Great strides have been made, Giacalone said, from the old convenience stores’ security systems that would continuously run old VCR tapes in a loop, resulting in very poor picture quality.
This isn’t the first local homicide case to be caught on video, of course.
In 2007 in Newport News, a graphic surveillance tape at H&H Market, near the intersection of Madison Avenue and 35th Street, captured Larry Eugene Christian, then 28, recognized by his “distinctive goatee,” approaching Shawnell Roscoe, 29, and another man, trying to rob them, and then shooting Roscoe in the back. Christian was convicted of first-degree murder and sentenced to life in prison.
In Hampton, there’s the pending case of a double slaying outside the White Oak Lodge, on Kecoughtan Road, in April 2013.
Investigators say the defendant, Rahmeal Perry, then 18, was seen on video footage inside the bar, wearing distinctly reflective shoes. Though the video footage from outside was dark and grainy, similar shoe reflections could still be seen. Perry goes to trial in June on two counts of first-degree murder.
But few cases beat Dantzler’s in terms of the overall strength of the footage.
That morning in January 2016, according to trial testimony, four men were riding around together in the gray minivan. They were all involved in a check fraud scheme in which they would cash phony checks at area credit unions.
But that morning, Dantzler got turned down at a credit union in York County. And as the four men drove around, Dantzler asked the driver, Damon Harriott, to stop and pick up another man, Stephen L. Hayes, 27, of Newport News.
Harriott, 42, of Norfolk, testified that within moments of picking up Hayes — and as the minivan headed down Wickham Avenue — Dantzler and Hayes both suddenly pulled out handguns. They announced to the three other men — Harriott, Gray and Kelly — that they were being robbed and that, “You know what time it is.”
That’s when Harriott said he decided, as a means of escape, to crash the van into a parked pickup truck, then jump out “movie style” and run down the street.
The sound of that crash is what caused the neighbor to call 911. And it’s what caused the private investigator to pan over with his high-tech camera.
Hayes, charged with three counts of attempted robbery, two counts of abduction and nine gun charges, will go to trial April 24. Much of the same evidence used to convict Dantzler is also expected to be used against Hayes.
Dujardin can be reached by phone at 757-247-4749.
