Homicides hit close to home on the Peninsula and in the Hampton Roads region in 2011.
While the number of homicides continued to decline in the area, the year was noteworthy for a high number of deaths that resulted from domestic incidents, murder-suicides and child abuse/neglect.
Through the week of Christmas, Newport News police had investigated 17 homicides, two of which involved police officers killing armed suspects during confrontations. The city had 24 homicides in 2009 and 23 in 2010. Hampton had nine homicides, including one police shooting; that figure is down from 11 in 2009 and 16 in 2010.
However, the city of Williamsburg and the counties of York, Gloucester and James City combined for eight homicides this year after just one in 2009 and one in 2010.
In all, there were 109 homicides in the region this year, including South Hampton Roads and the Eastern Shore. That figure is down from 116 in 2010 and 136 in 2009.
This year's homicide data in Hampton Roads includes nine instances of murder-suicide, including a recent incident on the Eastern Shore in which a man killed his two children and their mother, apparently over a custody dispute. There also were at least a dozen other homicides that were believed to be domestic in nature.
"Sometimes the public sees the domestic incidents differently, but we investigate every case absolutely the same way," said Sgt. Dave Altman, who heads the homicide division of the Newport News Police Department. "We have procedures we go by. Everyone has cases that develop certain emotional attachments at some point, depending on the details of the case, but we proceed exactly the same way with the investigations."
The one exception, he noted, is any case involving the death of a child under the age of 14, which goes to the special victims unit rather than the homicide division.
Children at risk
There were at least five reported cases in Hampton Roads this year in which young children are suspected to have died at the hands of relatives or caregivers.
The most noteworthy domestic incident occurred in Newport News on Aug. 19, when police found 32-year-old Crystal Ragin dead in her home on Old Courthouse Way, along with three of her children – 15-year-old Sierra, 10-year-old Rasheed and 6-year-old Lakwan. Police believe her husband, 36-year-old John Moses Ragin, stabbed all four to death and then set fire to the home.
John Ragin and the couple's 5-year-old son were located the next day in Manning, S.C. He was charged with four counts of murder and extradited to Newport News, where he awaits trial.
Ragin has said he and his son went to South Carolina to visit relatives, and that his wife and the three children were alive when he left their home. In a jailhouse interview with the Daily Press in October, he accused the police of "railroading" him, stating: "I know I'm innocent. It doesn't matter what's in everyone else's head. I know where I was. I know I didn't do anything."
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