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Beef over pandemic unemployment card preceded deadly shooting, Norfolk police say

Peter Babar, left, and Donell Small are charged with killing Charles Sparks. (Norfolk Sheriff's Office)

Norfolk — Abriel Epps thought she and her brother-in-law would cruise to his dealer to get more weed on a sunny summer morning that had already topped 80 degrees.

But within a few minutes, a routine errand turned into tragedy. Men were chasing her brother-in-law, Charles A. Sparks of Chesapeake. There was a gun. Then a tussle. Then the first shot.

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More followed.

“Gunshots just started ringing out,” Epps testified at a Wednesday court hearing. Seven of them, she estimated. As bullets flew, she felt her arm burn, perhaps from a hot shell casing just ejected from a gun. Her ears were ringing.

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When everything was over, Sparks, 33, was dead. Peter William Babar, 49, and Donell Small, 27, are charged with second-degree murder in the Aug. 18 shooting. On Wednesday, Norfolk District Judge Bruce Wilcox ruled the prosecutor had presented enough evidence to send the cases against them to the grand jury and the higher circuit court, keeping them on track for trial.

Epps and Sparks had already been smoking blunts that morning, according to Epps’ testimony. Around 10 a.m., Sparks asked Epps to get in the car and drive him somewhere, although he didn’t specify the destination. Ultimately, they pulled up in the 900 block of Norchester Avenue in Norfolk, which Epps said she recognized as a place where Small, Sparks’ weed dealer, operated.

Small was already there. Sparks got out and the two men talked, Epps said. Everything seemed normal, calm. So Epps started looking down at her phone. This is when, Epps said, she spotted a gun in the car. She never knew Sparks to carry one, but there it was.

She didn’t have long to process that information. Right around then, a car pulled up and Babar hopped out, immediately chasing Sparks with a gun in his hand.

“He knew exactly who to go to,” Epps testified, suggesting Sparks had been set up.

Sparks fled, back to Epps and the car they’d come in. As he was about to get in, Babar grabbed his shirt with one hand, the gun still in the other. Sparks pleaded with him: He didn’t want any violence. Epps said she yelled at Babar, which led him to point the gun at her. By this time, Small had gotten close and was saying that Sparks had been threatening him, and that he couldn’t do stuff like that.

That’s when the gunshots started.

Epps bolted and took cover behind a tree. She saw Sparks sitting in the street, blood coming out of his pants. She ran back, started the car, got Sparks inside and took him to Sentara Norfolk General Hospital. He died there.

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Even though there was a gun in the car, Epps told defense attorney James Broccoletti that she never saw Sparks reach for or touch it, let alone fire it. But, she added, it was within his reach when he was shot.

Norfolk police Detective Matthew Walsh testified he interviewed Small after the shooting. Small told him the two had an argument over a PUA, or Pandemic Unemployment Assistance, card. Sparks had texted Small about it, and Small said he could come and get it at 900 Norchester, where Small was already visiting friends.

It was not clear from testimony or court records who the card originally belonged to or why it sparked an argument.

Small confessed to shooting two to three times as Babar fired.Then, according to the detective, Small said he ran through a cut, had someone pick him up at the corner, and then went to a hotel in Virginia Beach.

But, the detective added, Small told him Sparks fired at Babar and Small first.

None of the casings police recovered from the scene were from a .45-caliber gun, the kind they found in Sparks’ car, Walsh testified. Moreover, that gun was fully loaded.

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Jonathan Edwards, 757-739-7180, jonathan.edwards@pilotonline.com


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