Sam “Chubby” Edward Small, 52, a Black / African American man, was at home in Hampton, Virginia when an ordinary late-summer evening turned violent. On September 6, 2012, at about 9:32 p.m., Hampton Police Communications received a call reporting a shooting in the first block of Pacific Drive. Officers arrived to find Small inside his residence, suffering from a single gunshot wound to his upper torso, and he was rushed by ambulance to a nearby hospital with life-threatening injuries.
Over the next several days, the injury that had been inflicted in that brief moment defined everything that followed—medical efforts, anxious waiting, and the slow crystallizing of the case into a homicide investigation. On September 14, 2012, Small died from his injuries. His death was also reported as occurring at Riverside Regional Medical Center, where he was said to have “departed this life” in Hampton.
Investigators described the shooting as growing out of a confrontation that began with words and ended with a gun. Police said a verbal argument took place inside the residence between Small and someone he knew; during the dispute, the other man produced a handgun and shot him. That account framed the killing as personal and immediate—an escalation between acquaintances rather than an attack by an unknown intruder.
Hampton police identified the suspect as Davon Pierre Brooks, 23, with a last known address in the 2000 block of Victoria Boulevard. Months later, on February 21, 2013, Brooks was taken into custody in Petersburg, Virginia, in the 600 block of Cottonwood Drive by the Chesterfield Police Department and the U.S. Marshals Regional Fugitive Task Force. Police said he was arrested on outstanding warrants charging one count of homicide, two counts of use of a firearm in the commission of a felony, one count of aggravated malicious wounding, and one count of possession of a firearm by a convicted felon, and that he was then held at the Hampton City Jail.
