Home sweet home

My time getting short here, I have begun thinking about moving back to the shithole city I find myself living in. Not something I am looking forward to.

This happened across the street from the hospital where my daughter was born, in a neighhborhood I drive to to go running in because it is safer than the ghetto in which I live.

Police continued to pursue what leads they have this weekend in the slaying of a Navy lieutenant, gunned down face-to-face by his killer Thursday night as he walked with his fiancee and two children not far from Wards Corner.

But there have been no arrests, said Sgt. Jim Robertson, a police spokesman, and there is very little information available.

Lt. Todd Michael Cox, 40, was walking in the 100 block of Beverly Ave., across Granby Street from the Bon Secours DePaul Medical Center, when, just after 8 p.m. Thursday, a truck pulled up.

Witnesses told investigators that a man got out of the vehicle, walked up to Cox and shot him at point blank range. The gunman then continued to fire after the victim fell to the ground.

The assailant then got back in the vehicle and drove off.

Because of the extent of his wounds, paramedics did not take Cox to nearby DePaul, but rather to Sentara Norfolk General Hospital which has the region’s highest-level trauma care facility, said Jack Goldhorn, a spokesman for Norfolk Fire-Rescue. But his wounds were grave, and he was pronounced dead a short time later.

On Sunday, Robertson said investigators are pursuing every lead they have. But how many there are and what they might entail was not disclosed.

Robertson said police have only the sketchiest description of a suspect. It does not include any indication of the gunman’s age, height, weight or what he was wearing.

There also is very little information available about the truck he was driving other than that it was a pickup truck, Robertson said. The model or color "depends on which witness you talk to," he said, "that’s why we haven’t put anything out on it."
The motive for the slaying also is not known.

Neither Cox nor those with him were robbed, police have said. Police did not say if the assailant made any comments before or during the shooting.

The shooting scene is just a short walk from Cox’s home, along a bend in Granby Street where Beverly Avenue is one of a half-dozen, single-block streets to the east of the busy main thoroughfare. They all end at the water’s edge, along a tributary of the Lafayette River.

Police data suggest it is a neighborhood relatively free of major crimes.

I think the "relatively" is the key. In Norfolk, "relatively" low crime means only infrequent shootings.

Here are a couple other local headlines from today:

"Man to serve prison time again in maiming, DUI case"

"Chesapeake man gets 22 years for child sex solicitation conviction"

"Police identify body of woman found under tarp in Chesapeake"
[she was a Norfolk woman]

"Body found in car in Suffolk is identified"