Police arrest same man for two Hampton killings
Two men were killed Saturday night and Sunday morning in separate incidents in the same Hampton apartment complex.
Though police have arrested the same man in both slayings, court documents don’t reveal a suspected motive for either shooting.
The two shooting victims — a 39-year-old Portsmouth man and a 29-year-old Hampton man — were killed less than 10 hours apart in separate apartments at the Avalon Townhouses, north of Buckroe.
Tri’Shaun Lamar Boone Jr., 20, of Hampton — who had no prior criminal record — was arrested Monday and charged with two counts of murder and multiple gun counts.
A criminal complaint affidavit filed Tuesday in Hampton General District Court says police got a call about the first shooting, on East Roger Peed Drive, about 11 p.m. Saturday.
They found Donnell R. Hoskin
Jr., 39 — Boone’s mother’s boyfriend — lying near the front door at the bottom of an indoor staircase. He had been shot.
Two of Boone’s family members told police they heard three gunshots in the stairwell, then heard Hoskin falling down the stairs. One of the witnesses said she saw Boone holding a gun while “standing close” to Hoskin before the shots.
Boone then searched frantically for some keys — repeatedly asking “Where are the keys?”— before fleeing. Hampton police investigators found three 9mm cartridge casings in the stairwell from a Sig Luger handgun, the affidavit said.
Just over nine hours later, at 8:24 a.m. Sunday, police got a call about a shooting inside a home in the 2100 block of Newton Road, in the apartment complex.
They found Antoine Bryant, 29, of Hampton, dead in a chair, the affidavit said.
Police said Boone — an acquaintance of Bryant’s — was in the home when he went into a bathroom. After a “metallic sound” from the bathroom, the affidavit said, Boone emerged and shot Bryant several times in the living room. Boone left through the back door, the affidavit said, “only to re-enter the residence and shoot at Bryant several more times” before fleeing.
Bryant’s girlfriend, who was in the apartment at the time, picked Boone out of a photo spread as the man who shot him. “Upon speaking with Harper, this was an unprovoked incident, and there is no motive for the shooting,” Hampton Police Detective Michael Snelgrow wrote in the affidavit.
Hampton Police spokesman Sgt. Reggie Williams declined to elaborate Thursday on what police think might have led to the killings, saying the case is still under investigation.
Boone is charged with two counts of murder, one count of attempted robbery, and seven gun charges — three counts of using a gun in a felony, two counts of shooting inside an occupied dwelling, and two counts of reckless handling of a firearm.
During the investigations, police said, they traced Boone to a Feb. 21 robbery at a Family Dollar at 2006 Nickerson Blvd., in which a man demanded money from a cashier, telling her he had a gun in his coat pocket. When a store manager challenged Boone about whether he actually had a gun, he ran out of the store without cash, an affidavit said.
A woman who answered the doorbell at the East Roger Peed home Thursday declined to comment. A neighbor said the family moved to the street about four months ago, were quiet and didn’t cause any problems. No one answered the door at the Newton Road home.
Court documents say Boone has lived in the area about 12 years and had no prior criminal record. He’s being held without bond at the Hampton City Jail and is scheduled to appear for a preliminary hearing May 5.
Hoskin’s older sister, Marci Hoskin, 49, said her family and his many friends and co-workers are devastated by his loss.
“He knew a lot of people,” she said. “And everybody that knew him is all heartbroken. All torn apart. We all can’t believe it. We all are like, ‘No, not him.’... We’re all taking it hard.”
Marci Hoskin said her brother was employed at a local shipyard and had a 14-year-old son. “They were like best friends,” she said, adding that she was “best friends” with him as well.
“He would check up on people to see how they were doing,” she said. “He was a clown. He was silly. He made people laugh... He wasn’t mean. He wasn’t into anything. No drugs. No bad person. He was an excellent person. He touched everyone, and everyone he met remembers him.”
As for why it happened, she said: “We don’t know. We’re asking ourselves why.”
Bryant’s family could not be located for comment.