In the late summer of 2015, the life of 42-year-old Guy Lavon Cuffee was brought to an abrupt and violent end in a Virginia Beach apartment complex parking lot. On the morning of August 11th, while waiting to take his daughter to work in the Green Run area, an assailant shot him in the head. First responders found him next to his car and pronounced him dead at the scene, leaving a family to grapple with the sudden loss of a father.
The investigation into the male victim's death soon focused on a man named Angelo Delano Perry. Ballistic tests would later confirm that a stolen semi-automatic pistol was the weapon used to murder Cuffee. This same firearm was eventually traced to Perry, connecting him to a string of violent crimes that had plagued the Virginia Beach area throughout that summer, including other shootings and a homicide. Investigators learned that Perry was on parole from Georgia for a prior shooting in Virginia Beach and had left that state without informing his parole officer.
The manhunt for Angelo Perry culminated in a deadly confrontation just weeks after Cuffee's murder. On September 5, 2015, police, acting on a tip that Perry was about to commit another violent act, located him and his girlfriend, India Kager, outside a 7-Eleven in the Princess Anne area of Virginia Beach. As officers moved in to arrest him, Perry opened fire on them from his vehicle. The police returned fire, and in the ensuing shootout, both Perry and Kager were killed. A 4-month-old infant in the backseat of the car was found unharmed.
In the wake of the shootout, Guy Cuffee's daughter, Lera Jackson, publicly defended the actions of the police officers involved. She stated that the officers were doing their job and that the death of Angelo Perry represented a form of justice for her father's senseless murder. Her statements came as a counter-narrative to claims of police misconduct from Kager's family. For the family of Guy Cuffee, the end of Angelo Perry's violent spree closed a painful chapter, though the void left by his loss remains.
