Robert A. Summerville, a 52-year-old Black/African American man known to friends and family as “Bobby,” had built a life in Virginia Beach that revolved around work, family, and the steady routines of home. Born in Portsmouth in 1960, he graduated from Kellam High School and worked as a cook, the kind of job where people come to recognize you by your voice and your smile before they even learn your name.
He left behind children, siblings, extended family, and a wide circle of people who later poured their grief into messages of remembrance and disbelief.
On Saturday night, January 26, 2013, that ordinary life was ruptured at the edge of his own front door. Police said Summerville was at the doorstep of his home in the 3200 block of Manor Glen Court when an altercation unfolded with another person. The encounter escalated into gunfire shortly before 11 p.m., and he was shot in a way that turned his home’s threshold into the scene of a fatal attack.
In the immediate aftermath, the details that mattered most came in fragments: a time window, a location, and the blunt reality that he had been killed right where he should have been safest. The neighborhood became part of the investigation as officers and detectives tried to piece together what sparked the confrontation and how the shooter moved away from the doorway afterward.
Police publicly focused on a description of the suspected shooter rather than a name, portraying a man believed to be around 35 years old and about 5'9" tall, wearing a black skullcap and a black coat with “Timberland” written across the front. Investigators urged anyone with information to call the Crime Line at 1-888-LOCK-U-UP, leaning on the hope that someone had seen the approach, heard the argument, or noticed the suspect leaving the area. In that initial report, no arrest was announced and no suspect was identified by name.
As the case moved forward, Summerville’s family prepared to bury him while answers were still out of reach. A funeral was scheduled at Mt. Zion AME Church on Princess Anne Road, with visitation at Beach Funeral Services, and his surviving relatives were listed one by one in print—children, siblings, nieces and nephews, and others—each name a reminder that the violence at the doorstep didn’t end there, but rippled outward into a long, public mourning.
