On a cold January morning in Portsmouth, Virginia, the quiet of the day was broken by a grim discovery. Willie Allen, a 56-year-old man, was found lifeless near a pump station on Race Street on January 10, 2017. A dedicated city employee for over three decades, Allen had been called to the location to address an alarm, a routine part of a job he was known to love. His body was discovered face down, having been shot multiple times.
It quickly became apparent that this was no accident; his wallet and other personal items were missing, and investigators believed text messages may have been sent from his phone after he was already gone.
The snowy ground held clues to the brazen crime. Footprints led away from the scene to a nearby convenience store. There, surveillance footage captured a man in camouflage leaving the area around the time of the incident. This individual was later identified as Andre Debrough, a former co-worker of Allen's and the ex-boyfriend of his step-daughter. Investigators learned that Allen had previously warned Debrough to stay away from his step-daughter due to allegations of abuse. Debrough, who had once worked alongside Allen and was familiar with the pump station's operations, had been fired from his job with the city for reasons that were not publicly disclosed.
The investigation culminated in the arrest of Andre Debrough, who was subsequently charged with Willie Allen's murder. As the case moved toward trial, it came to light that Debrough had a history of legal troubles, including a separate and serious accusation of raping a woman at gunpoint in a motel just weeks before Allen's death.
Despite the evidence presented by the prosecution, the path to justice took an unexpected turn. After a trial that concluded nearly five years after Andre Debrough was first charged, a Portsmouth Circuit Court jury deliberated for only a brief period before returning a verdict of not guilty. The acquittal left a community and a grieving family with unanswered questions and a sense of unresolved loss for the man they remembered as a hardworking and well-liked public servant.
