Weekend shootings leave 1 dead, 2 injured

Two shootings last weekend, one in Hanover County and one in Richmond, left one person dead, two injured, and some members of VCU’s community concerned about the media’s coverage of the incidents.

Deputies on security duty at Paramount’s Kings Dominion in Hanover County found two shooting victims, an 18-year-old male and a 21-year-old male, about 9 p.m. Saturday in a parking lot of the theme park, according to a Hanover County Sheriff’s Office press release.

Police charged David Gleason McKoy, 23, of Woodbridge, with two counts each of malicious wounding and possessing a firearm in the commission of a felony. He is being held in the Pamunkey Regional Jail without bond.

The incident occurred after the closing of the annual Black Entertainment Television College Hip-Hop Fest at Kings Dominion, an event that drew nearly 20,000 attendees, according to the sheriff’s office figures. A major portion of the crowd traveled downtown after the music festival ended.

Four hours later, shots could be heard again near the Greater Richmond Convention Center when Ka-mel Tamar Loftin, 20, of Richmond, was found dead on the 300 block of East Broad Street, apparently from a gunshot wound to the head.

Jennifer Reilly, a spokeswoman for Richmond City Police, said authorities Monday had not yet identified a suspect but they did have “strong leads on the identity of the suspect, and it appears he’s from Richmond as well.”

Because both these shootings occurred shortly after a music event that attracted a large crowd of black students and others – and because media coverage connected the two incidents – some VCU students and faculty said they think people sometimes link these two events in their minds when there may be no connection between them.

Njeri Jackson, director of the African-American studies program at VCU, called the coverage “profoundly racist.”

“Somehow,” she said, “this has got to stop. We do not know the details of the case. To notice that these are African-Americans, and to make a leap that this has something to do with being African-American – this is absolutely fallacious.”

She also disagreed with the notion that occurrences like the shootings place a negative stigma on the entire black community.

“When a white person commits a crime,” she said, “nobody stands up and says, ‘this stigmatizes the white community.’ “

The Richmond Times-Dispatch reported both incidents in one article each on April 14 and 15. But it also reported that while Loftin had attended the Kings Dominion event, Richmond police had found no evidence thus far to link the shootings.

Sherri Hinton, 19, a business administration and management major, said she thinks the media unfairly exaggerate stories involving blacks in negative situations.

“I think the media thrive on this kind of drama when it involves black people,” she said.

Some students also suggested that when people notice a high number of police in an area, they automatically assume it’s because of an event that draws a black crowd.

Reilly, however, stressed that the racial makeup of an expected crowd is “certainly not” a factor in police decisions regarding large events.

Things the police do consider, she said, include the number of people expected to be in the area at a given time and whether past events had problems that required police assistance.

Reilly said expectations of a large crowd in the downtown Richmond area following the black entertainment festival as well as people in the area for other events such as an Amway convention did prompt “a large police presence” in the downtown Richmond area.

“Wherever we’re needed,” she said, “that’s where we go.”

Michael Lewellen, vice president of corporate communications at BET, said the Kings Dominion shooting would not affect the company’s plans for next year’s College Hip-Hop Fest.

“BET and Paramount’s Kings Dominion have worked very well together,” he said. “We anticipate doing this again in 2004.”

Still, not all VCU students made a connection between the Kings Dominion and the Richmond shootings.

“What happens one place,” said a 20-year-old marketing major who identified himself as Rico and declined to give his last name, “doesn’t mean it’s the cause of something that happens somewhere else.”