City of Petersburg

1500 block of Montgomery Avenue

12:45 AM

Gunshot

Robbery

Petersburg man fatally shot / He was walking his brother to his car; 2 suspects are sought
By Chris I. Young
Times-Dispatch Staff Writer

Sunday,August 23, 2009

Early yesterday morning, a little after midnight, James Brown stepped out of his Petersburg house to walk his brother to his car. He never made it back inside alive.

A man with a gun walked up to Brown and his brother and tried to rob them, his sister Jennifer Tucker said.

“ ‘Give it up, give it up, give me everything,’ he said,” Tucker said.

The men fought, and Brown, 44, was shot several times. A man with a mask walked up and shot Brown as well, she said.

Petersburg police responded to a 911 call at 12:45 a.m. to the house in the 1500 block of Montgomery Avenue and found Brown outside the house. The two men had fled on foot, said Esther Hyatt, police spokeswoman.

Hyatt could not confirm that Brown was shot with two guns or whether both men approached Brown at the same time, though she said one man carried a shotgun and the other a pistol.

Police are looking for both gunmen, considered armed and “very dangerous,” Hyatt said.

Brown was shot in the neck, chest, leg and side, according to his sister. He was taken to Southside Regional Medical Center, where he was pronounced dead at 1:38 a.m.

Tucker, 39, lives in Hopewell but was vacationing out of state at the time of the shooting. She rushed back and was with family yesterday.

Brown, called “JB” by his family, washed cars at a local car wash and had a daughter and four brothers, she said.

“My brother was a very nice person,” Tucker said. “He stayed to himself. He didn’t bother anybody. For someone to come up to him and do this heinous crime, it’s beyond belief.”

Brown’s family said the two men may have committed another crime in the same neighborhood right before encountering Tucker, but Hyatt did not confirm that yesterday evening.

“Maybe my brother came out of the house at the wrong time,” Tucker said. “For anyone to hurt him is beyond belief.”