{"id":24627,"date":"2019-06-01T10:16:01","date_gmt":"2019-06-01T16:16:01","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.summitdaily.com\/news\/virginia-beach-shooting-victims-were-veteran-city-employees\/"},"modified":"2019-06-01T10:16:01","modified_gmt":"2019-06-01T16:16:01","slug":"virginia-beach-shooting-victims-were-veteran-city-employees","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kift\/local-news\/virginia-beach-shooting-victims-were-veteran-city-employees\/","title":{"rendered":"Virginia Beach shooting victims were veteran city employees"},"content":{"rendered":"
People gather to pray during a vigil in response to a fatal shooting at a municipal building in Virginia Beach, Virginia, Saturday.<\/strong>
Patrick Semansky \/ AP | AP<\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

VIRGINIA BEACH, Va. \u2014 The 12 people who were fatally shot in a Virginia Beach government building were remembered Saturday during a somber news conference as officials sought to put the focus on those who died and not the gunman.<\/p>\n

Police Chief James Cervera identified the assailant as DeWayne Craddock, who was employed for 15 years as an engineer with the city\u2019s utilities department. He declined to comment on a motive for Friday\u2019s rampage, which ended with Craddock\u2019s death in a gun battle with police. City officials uttered his name just once and said they would not mention it again.<\/p>\n

City Manager Dave Hansen said he had worked for years with many of the dead, 11 of whom were city employees. The 12th was a contractor trying to get a permit.<\/p>\n

Their names and photos were projected on a screen as Hansen read aloud biographical information that included their hometowns and years of service.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey leave a void that we will never be able to fill,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

Chaplains and family assistance workers worked through the night to notify relatives \u2014 a job that Hansen described as \u201cthe most difficult task anyone will ever have to do.\u201d<\/p>\n

One of the dead employees had worked for the city for 41 years. Six worked in the same department as Craddock, though authorities have declined to say if anyone was specifically targeted or if the suspect had issued threats before. The victims were found throughout the building, on three floors, police said.<\/p>\n

Authorities have said Craddock opened fire indiscriminately. Four other people were wounded, including a police officer whose bulletproof vest saved his life.<\/p>\n

The suspect was armed with a .45-caliber handgun with a noise suppressor, police said. Cervera said Saturday that more weapons were found at the scene and at his home, but he declined to elaborate.<\/p>\n

The building was open to the public, but security passes were required to enter inner offices, conference rooms and other work areas. As a current employee, Craddock would have had the pass to enter the inner offices, Hansen said.<\/p>\n

Asked how secure the building was, the police chief said that government buildings must balance access with security.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s an open government building. Citizens have the right to access open government buildings. Employees have a right to access their work site,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

Craddock, 40, was a professional engineer who had graduated from Denbigh High School in nearby Newport News in 1996 and joined the Army National Guard, according to a newspaper clip from the time. He received basic military training and advanced individual training at Fort Sill, Oklahoma. He later graduated from Old Dominion University with a bachelor\u2019s degree in civil engineering.<\/p>\n

The 11 city employees who were killed were identified as Tara Welch Gallagher, Mary Louise Gayle, Alexander Mikhail Gusev, Katherine A. Nixon, Ryan Keith Cox, Joshua A. Hardy and Michelle \u201cMissy\u201d Langer, all of Virginia Beach; Laquita C. Brown and Robert \u201cBobby\u201d Williams, both of Chesapeake; and Richard H. Nettleton of Norfolk and Christopher Kelly Rapp of Powhatan. The 12th victim, Herbert \u201cBert\u201d Snelling of Virginia Beach, was a contractor filling a permit.<\/p>\n

Craddock appeared to have had no felony record, which would have made him eligible to purchase guns.<\/p>\n

Joseph Scott, an engineering technician with the department of public works, said he had worked with Craddock before and had a brief interaction with him Friday. Scott said he saw him in the men\u2019s restroom about five minutes before the shooting.<\/p>\n

\u201cHe was in there brushing his teeth, which he always did after he ate,\u201d Scott said. \u201cI said \u2018Hey, how you doing? What are you doing this weekend?\u2019 It was just a brief conversation.\u201d<\/p>\n

Scott said he left for the day right after and learned of the shooting when a co-worker and then his son called him asking if he was OK.<\/p>\n

\u201cI couldn\u2019t believe that it happened,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

Scott said he worked in a different division from Craddock, whom he described as quiet, polite and a \u201cnice guy.\u201d Scott said he thought Craddock was in good standing at work and had never heard negative reports about him.<\/p>\n

Craddock\u2019s neighbors said police swarmed the neighborhood of modest townhomes Friday in Virginia Beach. Some said he had lived there for at least 10 years.<\/p>\n

Several neighbors said Craddock was a clean-cut member of the neighborhood association board whose wife had left him some years ago.<\/p>\n

Associated Press writers Regina Garcia Cano and Michael Biesecker in Washington, D.C.; Denise Lavoie and Michael Kunzelman in Virginia Beach, Virginia; and Jonathan Drew in Durham, North Carolina, contributed to this report.<\/p>\n

via:: Summit Daily<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

People gather to pray during a vigil in response to a fatal shooting at a municipal building in Virginia Beach, Virginia, Saturday.Patrick Semansky \/ AP | AP VIRGINIA BEACH, Va. \u2014 The 12 people who were fatally shot in a Virginia Beach government building were remembered Saturday during a somber news conference as officials sought […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[97],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-24627","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-local-news"},"acf":[],"publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-06-11 09:51:14","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"distributor_meta":false,"distributor_terms":false,"distributor_media":false,"distributor_original_site_name":"KIFT - The LIFT FM","distributor_original_site_url":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kift","push-errors":false,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kift\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24627","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kift\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kift\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kift\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kift\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=24627"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kift\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24627\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kift\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=24627"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kift\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=24627"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kift\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=24627"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}