Police identify slaying suspect who shot himself

8:30 a.m.

Police also identified Charles Jackson, 56, of 1204 N. 30th St. as the man found slain shortly before Pleasants shot himself.

Pleasants was being sought in the slaying of Tarchelle Nicole Daniel, found shot multiple times in a car behind her residence in the 1200 block of Lakeview Avenue in the Randolph neighborhood about 11 a.m.

(This has been a breaking news update. Check back for more developments as they become available. The earlier story from this morning’s Richmond Times-Dispatch is posted below.)

12:47 a.m.

An apparent murder-suicide yesterday in Richmond's East End brought to six the number of gunshot deaths this week in Richmond and Henrico County.

As police closed in on a suspect in yesterday morning's slaying of a Richmond woman, he shot to death an apparently innocent bystander and then fatally shot himself about 5:30 p.m., authorities said.

This week's victims in Richmond include a man gunned down in a parking lot after buying a pizza; a man found dead amid the gravestones in a historic Richmond cemetery; and the Richmond woman, Tarchelle Nicole Daniel, who was fatally wounded behind her apartment in the city's Randolph neighborhood.

Throughout yesterday, police were looking in various neighborhoods for the suspect in Daniel's killing when they spotted him in the area of North 29th, North 30th and S streets, said David M. McCoy, the city's assistant police chief.

A Richmond officer saw him dash into a yard behind a privacy fence in the 1200 block of North 30th Street, McCoy said.

"Officers heard a shot, and the suspect ran for about 40 yards," McCoy said. "He stopped, shot himself and now he's deceased."

Police quickly backtracked the suspect's route and found the other body, McCoy said.

"It is a reasonable belief that [he] was an innocent bystander," McCoy said. "But we're still investigating."

Authorities did not immediately identify either of the bodies.

Police did not fire a shot during the ordeal, said department spokesman Gene Lepley.

Police sealed off 29th and 30th streets from R to S streets as detectives investigated. One distraught woman begged police, "Can I go see my son? Please, please, please!"

Police on the other side of the yellow tape apologized but said they couldn't let her pass. They sought to comfort her, and an acquaintance then drove her away from the scene.

Hours earlier, shortly before 11 a.m., Daniel was shot multiple times in her mother's white Nissan Altima behind the home they shared at Randolph Village Apartments, police said. The complex is in the 1200 block of Lakeview Avenue between South Randolph and South Harrison streets, six blocks south of West Cary Street.

Daniel, 36, was about to leave to pick up her 16-year-old daughter at Thomas Jefferson High School, where she is a student, so they could go get their hair done, said Daniel's mother, Shirley Daniel.

The victim's 13-year-old son heard shots from inside their home and rushed outside to his mother.

"Bang, bang, bang bang," the boy said later, speaking softly and looking at the floor as he recalled the gunshots.

Daniel was pronounced dead at VCU Medical Center at 11:35 a.m.

Daniel's daughter was notified of the shooting while still at Thomas Jefferson. She took the school bus home, where she stepped off the bus with several other children, who encountered yellow police tape that marked off an expansive area.

A Hanover County tracking dog sniffed the area surrounding the crime scene, where the Nissan was parked, its driver's side window shattered. Earlier, a police plane circled overhead in an effort to pinpoint the shooter's location.

Shirley Daniel said that when someone called her at work to inform her of the shooting, she dropped the telephone.

Shirley Daniel said her daughter was devoted to her children and usually stayed home with family when she was not working at her job at a grocery store. Tarchelle Daniel also took classes at J. Sargeant Reynolds Community College.

"She didn't smoke, she didn't drink, she didn't do drugs," her mother said. "She was looking for a better job to take care of her family."

Daniel had lived at Randolph Village about 15 years, but the family recently had been planning to move into a bigger home in South Richmond, her mother said. "We were looking forward to this big new change," she said.

Tarchelle Daniel's death and the killing of the apparent bystander marked the 10th and 11th homicides this year in Richmond.

Yesterday's shootings came after the discovery of a shooting victim at Oakwood Cemetery on Thursday and the fatal shooting the same day of another man less than a mile away in the parking lot of a shopping center. Wednesday night, another shooting victim was found in Henrico.

"People are taking lives like they're a fly on the wall," said Alicia Rasin, founder of Citizens Against Crime.

McCoy said investigators do not believe that the earlier shootings are connected to one another or to either of yesterday's shootings. But he said that city detectives were working closely with Henrico police on the county's homicide and the shooting at the cemetery.

In the graveyard, police discovered the body of Tyree Jerard Jefferson Jr., 39. Jefferson, a cook at Touch of Soul restaurant in Shockoe Bottom, last had been seen the evening before, when he left work intending to go play basketball, according to Rasin and the owner of the restaurant, Ty Goins.

They described Jefferson, known by friends as "Sweets," as a hard worker with a passion for cooking.

Rasin said Jefferson left work about 6 p.m. Wednesday and was walking along Nine Mile Road to go play basketball. His path apparently would have taken him past the cemetery. Police have not said when he was killed.

Even before Jefferson's body was removed from the mid-19th-century graveyard, which is the final resting place of 17,000 Confederate soldiers, Richmond police were notified of another fatal shooting less than a mile away.

That victim, Devin L. Morse, 26, was gunned down in the parking lot at the Eastlawn Shopping Center at Creighton and Nine Mile roads as he was walking to a car with a pizza, according to sources, including one in law enforcement.

In Henrico on Wednesday evening, authorities found the body of Marcus D. Braddy, 26, near Elkridge Lane and Holly Street in the Central Gardens area, the victim of a shooting.

No arrests have been made in any of the slayings. County police, however, did identify a person of interest in their case, 30-year-old Omar Carrington.

Anyone with information on any of the killings is asked to call Crime Stoppers at (804) 780-1000.

Contact Reed Williams at (804) 649-6332 or rwilliams@timesdispatch.com.

Contact Frank Green at (804) 649-6340 or fgreen@timesdispatch.com.