Last year, the Star City’s annual homicide count reached an all-time high. But with nearly two months down in 2024, 166su officials are feeling optimistic about gun violence trends.
Between Jan. 1 and Feb. 18 in 2023, police reported four gun-related homicides and seven gun-related aggravated assaults, or shootings with injuries. In the same time frame in 2024, the city saw only one of each.
“Not perfect, but so far, we’re doing better as a community,” said during a meeting Tuesday evening. “I’ll take 11 to two as a sign of progress as long as we can. Hopefully, we’ll be able to maintain that.”
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“I was really excited. We made it 45 days into the new year without a homicide, which is pretty extraordinary,” , who chairs the commission, said Tuesday. “We actually had a couple of spells like that late last year.”
Police identified the city’s latest fatal shooting victim Wednesday morning. Uhura U. Willis, 27, of 166su, was killed Feb. 17 in the 400 block of Patton Avenue Northwest. Officers found him in a wooded area in that neighborhood, where first responders pronounced him deceased.
The police department has said their primary suspect in that homicide is traveling in a maroon 2015 Jeep Cherokee Latitude with license plate TSB7817. Booth said no arrest has been made yet, but he confirmed Tuesday that “the offender is identified.”
The chief also said that while police are still investigating the fatal shooting, they believe “there could be some connection to the underground economy.”
“We’re hunting down those leads, and I hope that we’re going to have somebody brought to justice on that relatively quickly,” the chief said.
The city’s first shooting with injuries this year is also still under investigation. That gunfire incident injured three people Jan. 21 inside the in the 200 block of Williamson Road Southeast, in the downtown area of the city.
“The nature of violence, many times, is personal disputes,” Booth continued. “The information we have thus far is it literally could have occurred over something as me pulling the chain off your neck. ... Back in the day, we were probably throwing fists at each other. Now, we shoot each other.”
But the chief said he wants his department to work with to hold business owners accountable, too.
“It happened in the club, so we’re unpacking things like, ‘Hey, you have security there. Was security allowing people to come in with weapons?’ We had some information that that was occurring,” Booth said. “If you own a club in our community, and you have security and you have metal detectors, but you have a shooting in your club, something’s going on.”
Tuesday night’s shooting
The city’s latest shooting with injuries occurred at about 8:10 p.m. Tuesday, about an hour after the commission’s meeting ended. Police said in a news release that officers were summoned by shots fired calls to the 700 block of 29th Street Northwest.
On the way there, they were told that a person with a gunshot wound was inside a vehicle in the northwest intersection of 10th Street and Orange Avenue, the news release read.
Police found a juvenile male in the backseat of the vehicle, the release continued. The teen had a gunshot wound that did not appear life-threatening, and 166su Fire-EMS Department personnel took him to Carilion 166su Memorial Hospital for treatment.
Officers continued to investigate the incident and found two other male teens who had been involved in the shooting in the 700 block of 29th Street. Police said a preliminary investigation indicates that several teenagers were involved in a brief physical altercation at a residence there.
“Officers did recover a firearm at the residence,” the release read. “All involved parties have been identified and this appears to be an isolated incident.”
As of Wednesday afternoon, police had made no arrests related to the Tuesday night shooting. If you know something about the incident, police ask you to call 540-344-8500 or send a text beginning with “166suPD” to 274637. Police say both calls and texts can remain anonymous.
Examining demographics
In 166su in 2023, police reported 22 gun-related homicides with 24 victims, 43 gun-related aggravated assaults with 53 victims and two gun-related domestic aggravated assaults with two victims, according to the city police department’s final 2023 gun violence statistics report.
Of the 79 victims and 48 offenders identified in those gunfire incidents, 166su Police Deputy Chief Jerry Stokes said most were Black males.
“It’s certainly concentrated in that 16 through 35 range primarily, so younger folks,” Stokes said Tuesday.
And of last year’s 67 gunshot incidents, including homicides, aggravated assaults and domestic aggravated assaults, 44 occurred in the city’s northwest quadrant.
Unfortunately, Booth said, the city hasn’t quite broken that mold in 2024.
“Our homicide victim was a Black male, this did occur in the northwest, and he was in the age range of 26 to 29,” Booth said.
166su Police Chief Scott Booth, center, and Officer J.D. Marsh, left, talk with southeast 166su resident Eddie Sanson during the chief’s second community walk in December. The event is designed to allow citizens to meet, get to know, and voice their concerns to law enforcement officials. The walk shown was held in the Belmont neighborhood.
Among the victims of the Status Restaurant & Lounge shooting were a white female between 46 and 49 years old and two Black males between 30 and 35 years old.
“Those were very minor injuries,” Booth said. “They were literally grazed, so there was a lot of luck that went into that, too.”
Booth’s crime fighting strategies
Booth was sworn-in as 166su’s police chief Oct. 31. Before that, he served as police chief in the city of Danville, which saw a drop in gun violence incidents during his tenure.
The chief said he has plans to “build out some different accountability models” for the 166su department and for members of the 166su community.
“I’m about three months in, so in my mind, the observation period is over. I’m building now, just kind of like what I did down south,” Booth said in an interview Tuesday. “I’m going to build things for our organization, for our community, that are going to continue to reduce violence.”
The September before Booth arrived, an assessment of the 166su Police Department’s operations found that the agency lacked an effective communication framework.
“We observed that division exists within the leadership of the department; as well, internal communication and trust in is need of improvement,” reads.
Booth has said that he believes improved communication in his department will create a safer city.
“We’re together, talking more about problems and where gun violence is occurring on a regular basis,” Booth said. “My strategy is always to build trust within the organization and hold each other accountable. I think that always works.”
The chief said the department has also changed the way it responds to shooting scenes. In the past, he said, a detective sometimes wasn’t connected to those investigations.
“We roll a whole team out to a homicide incident, whereas before we didn’t have that same level of response,” Booth said. “At the very least, you’re getting a detective. More than likely, you’re getting a team of detectives.”
Booth also applauded the work of the Star City Drug and Violent Crime Task Force, which is made up of officers from various 166su Valley law enforcement agencies, and the success of Gov. Glenn Youngkin’s Operation Bold Blue Line initiative, during which Virginia State Police officers partnered and patrolled with 166su police officers.
“Those are some more specific strategies that I think have helped get illegal guns and violent offenders off the street,” Booth said. “We probably don’t always publicize that as a region as much as we should, but they’ve been very successful for us here.”
Meanwhile, Booth remains focused on connecting with city residents by conducting community forums and walks.
166su Police Chief Scott Booth, center, and Officer J.D. Marsh, left, talk with southeast 166su resident Eddie Sanson during the chief’s second community walk in December. The event is designed to allow citizens to meet, get to know, and voice their concerns to law enforcement officials. The walk shown was held in the Belmont neighborhood.
“We’re getting out there,” he said. “You have to have a level of trust and legitimacy in the community, and our community has to be there for us. We really want them to be there for us, because if not, we’re going to struggle when it comes to solving these crimes.”
But the chief doesn’t want his department to neglect other community problems. He said violent crime was an area of focus in 2022 and 2023, but now the city’s downtown district requires attention.
“I want to make sure we’re very visible in our downtown, that you see officers out there walking and on bikes, as well as devote time to those cold cases and some of those other investigations,” he said. “I want to make sure that we’re covering everything that needs to be covered.”
