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Chesapeake — An off-duty Norfolk police officer escalated a confrontation that ended with him fatally shooting a 42-year-old man early this year, a Chesapeake prosecutor said Tuesday.
On the afternoon of Jan. 19, Edmund Hoyt drove to a Chesapeake neighborhood where his wife said she had been pushing her kids in a stroller and that a man — later identified as Kelvin White — confronted her and told her she couldn’t pass, prosecutor D.J. Hansen said.
The hearing Tuesday in General District Court, where Hoyt’s lawyer asked a judge to let him out of jail on bond, gave the first hint of why prosecutors decided to charge Hoyt with voluntary manslaughter last week, seven months after the shooting.
[ Previous coverage: Norfolk police officer charged with manslaughter in off-duty Chesapeake shooting ]
When Hoyt arrived and got out of his truck, Hansen said, he identified himself as an officer, pulled out a personal gun — not his service weapon — and told White to get on the ground. He was not in uniform.
White refused, and Hoyt re-holstered his gun and went “hands on” with White, wrestling him, the prosecutor added. He said Hoyt was scratched in the face during the struggle and White took out a butter or cheese knife.
Hoyt fired six shots, three of which hit White’s backpack and three that struck his body, Hansen said. Hoyt told his wife to call 911.
Hansen said White was not menacing Hoyt when the off-duty officer pulled his gun. It was Hoyt’s decision to go “hands on,” Hansen said, arguing White had a right to defend himself: A man had pulled a gun and told him to get on the ground.
After the hearing, Judge Michael Katchmark agreed to set bond at $25,000 over the prosecutor’s objection. But Hoyt, 34, will stay in jail at least another night: Prosecutors appealed, so there will be another bond hearing in Circuit Court on Wednesday morning.
White was killed about a third of a mile away from his home in Chesapeake’s South Norfolk. His family said residents and Chesapeake officers who patrol the area knew White, who was schizophrenic. White often could be spotted walking and talking to himself on his way to the nearby Food Lion and 7-Eleven, family said.
When White confronted her, Hansen said, Hoyt’s wife told him she had mace and wasn’t afraid to use it, and White said he had a knife. The wife told him her husband was a police officer, and White said that he’d stab him, too, Hansen said.
Hoyt, who has been with the Norfolk Police Department for about two years, remains employed there and has been on administrative duty since the shooting. He appeared by video from the jail at Tuesday’s bond hearing.
In arguing for bond, Hoyt’s lawyer, James Broccoletti, said his client was not a flight risk, had done nothing out of the ordinary since the shooting and has strong ties to the area, including family and work.
“Everything about him is here,” Broccoletti said.
Hoyt served in the Navy and Army before getting a bachelor’s in criminal justice and joining the police force, his wife testified Tuesday. A friend from the Norfolk Police Department also testified on his behalf, and several uniformed Norfolk officers appeared in the courtroom in personal support of Hoyt.
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After hearing both sides, Katchmark noted the factors the law requires him to consider in deciding whether to grant bond. He said only one, the nature and seriousness of the charge, weighed toward keeping Hoyt in jail. The others — including the defendant’s history and character and whether he poses a flight risk or threat to the community — weighed in favor of granting bond.
Outside the courthouse after the hearing, Broccoletti said it was a case of a father who stepped in front of a man who was armed with a knife and had a history of mental illness to defend his wife and children.
In a phone interview Tuesday afternoon, one of White’s brothers, Gerard White, said some time elapsed from when his brother and Hoyt’s wife encountered each other to the moment the off-duty officer arrived on scene. He said he believes his brother may have gone to the store and was on his way home when Hoyt pulled up and approached him.
Gerard White said his family is hoping to see the severity of the charge against Hoyt increase as the case moves through the legal system.
Voluntary manslaughter, generally defined as a killing that is intentional but done in the heat of passion or a fight, is a felony that carries up to 10 years in prison. Second-degree murder, a more serious charge for intentional but not premeditated killings, carries up to 40 years.
Gerard White, who lives in Georgia, plans to drive to Chesapeake next week for what would have been Kelvin White’s 43rd birthday. He’ll visit a memorial set up by the Food Lion not far from his family’s home, he said, and place flowers on his brother’s grave.
Margaret Matray, 757-222-5216, margaret.matray@pilotonline.com