City of Richmond

1600 block of Monteiro Avenue

8:12 PM

Asphyxiation

Unknown

Fiancée of shot man found slain / Previously married to her, he was shot by police in Richmond traffic stop
By Reed Williams
Times-Dispatch Staff Writer
Friday,April 24, 2009
Wedding of shot man and slain fiancée recalled

The minister who married Nathan Randolph and Alnita Coleman at a state prison in 1998 remembers asking the couple why they wanted to get married while Randolph still had years to go behind bars.

Randolph, a convicted murderer, grew belligerent with the Rev. Cecil E. McFarland for questioning him on his wedding day, McFarland said. The couple told McFarland they were in love, and that all they needed him to do was to perform the ceremony.

At some point, the relationship apparently ended. Randolph was released from prison a year ago after three decades behind bars. He and Alnita Randolph-Coleman were engaged to be married again when police found her body Wednesday night where Randolph was living, at a halfway house in the 1600 block of Monteiro Avenue in North Richmond.

Randolph-Coleman, a 47-year-old mother of three, had been suffocated, and police are calling her death a homicide. Her relatives did not wish to be interviewed yesterday.

Early Wednesday morning, police pulled Randolph over at West Broad and North Laurel streets in Richmond for running several lights, and when he charged at several officers with a knife, they opened fire, authorities say. Last night, he remained in critical condition at VCU Medical Center.

He has been charged with attempted capital murder of a police officer. No charges have been filed in Randolph-Coleman’s killing. Authorities declined to discuss the killing further or discuss why he might have threatened police with a roughly 12-inch knife.

Authorities have not named the three Richmond officers and one VCU police officer involved in the shooting. All were placed on administrative leave or desk duty while an investigation by Richmond police and prosecutors continues into whether they used excessive force.

Richmond Commonwealth’s Attorney Michael N. Herring said yesterday that preliminary findings suggest the officers acted appropriately in defending themselves.

Herring said yesterday that the officers fired more than five shots and that Randolph was hit three or four times.

Randolph and Randolph-Coleman were married in February 1998 at the James River Correctional Center in Goochland County. McFarland recalled yesterday that no family members of either the bride or groom attended the ceremony in the prison’s chapel, and the couple did not exchange rings.

Randolph was sentenced to 57 years in 1978 for crimes including second-degree murder in the death of William H. Hoston, 56; the robbery of another man; and shooting and attempting to rob a third man. State parole law in effect at the time of Randolph’s convictions required that he be released from prison April 23, 2008.

A May 25, 1978, letter in a court file from psychiatrist Merritt W. Foster Jr. to a judge says Randolph complained of frequent nightmares involving killing people. Randolph said he had served in the Army from 1972 to 1975 and started using heroin while in the service, according to the letter. He also worked as a bricklayer’s helper and was supporting a 7-year-old son.

Randolph admitted he was hostile toward homosexuals, a feeling he was unable to explain, the letter says.

“I’m a lady’s man, you know, and the people in Virginia know me as a lady’s man,” Randolph told a detective, according to a transcript of a police interview in Richmond Circuit Court.

Randolph told the detective he stabbed Hoston in the head with a butcher knife in Hoston’s Richmond home in early February 1978 after Hoston made sexual advances toward Randolph. Randolph said he considered the killing self-defense.

He said he then drank some wine, stole Hoston’s car and went to South Carolina, where he later was captured by the FBI.