By Janie Bryan
The Virginian-Pilot
PORTSMOUTH, Va. — Clara Winfield told a 911 dispatcher her grandson had a gun. She said he was getting ready to reload it and she pleaded: “Please hurry. Please hurry.”
Officers Ronald White and James Yunker did hurry. They were the first to approach her home in the 500 block of Eisenhower Circle, coming from opposite directions.
It was early on March 9, and all they knew at that point was that a caller reported an armed person firing shots.
White took cover behind a pickup truck across the street.
He scanned the front yard and when he saw a man step out of the house, holding a shotgun, he screamed: “Police! Drop the weapon!”
Birdshot hit White’s face.
The details emerged Monday from both officers’ testimony during the trial of Bobbitt J. Gladney, who was found guilty of attempted capital murder of the police officer.
White testified he knew he had been hit, but didn’t know how badly he was hurt. He returned fire.
Yunker said he rounded a car in a nearby driveway in time to see Gladney bring the shotgun up and point it in White’s direction.
When Yunker got to the wounded officer, White’s face was covered with blood and he said he couldn’t see, Yunker testified.
One of the bird shot pellets had lodged in a lens of White’s eyeglasses.
It seemed like things happened in slow motion, Yunker said, but he estimated it unfolded in less than 10 minutes.
Another officer arrived, got White in a police car and was able to back it down the street to safety.
Monday, prosecutors also called to the stand Clara Winfield, Gladney’s grandmother, and her son, Robert Winfield.
Winfield testified that he and Gladney, 22, who is his nephew, had been at a bar drinking that night and they had argued. He had just walked into his mother’s house, Winfield said, when she told him that Gladney had his shotgun.
He testified he left immediately and was in the backyard when he heard four shots. He jumped a fence and ran down the street and did not come back until the next morning.
Inside the house, the dispatcher had continued to talk to Clara Winfield and also urged Gladney to go out with his hands up, telling him she would let police officers know he was unarmed.
Gladney’s grandmother went out with him.
Sonya Weaver Roots, Gladney’s attorney, argued that there was no proof that Gladney intended to kill the police officer.
Roots also argued that White’s injury was not serious enough to support a charge of aggravated malicious wounding.
She pointed out that Gladney’s blood tests showed he was intoxicated that night.
Assistant Commonwealth’s Attorney Regina Turner Sykes said that White will always have to live with the effects of the shot that was fired.
White was treated and released the night of the shooting, but had surgery weeks later to remove the pellets. A plastic surgeon, Dr. Tad Grenga, testified he was able to remove only 17 of the 20 pellets lodged in White’s forehead and scalp.
He said White will be permanently scarred and is not able to move one side of his forehead. There’s no way to know whether there will be additional effects from the pellets that could not be removed, he said.
Grenga testified he has treated other injuries from birdshot. He has seen at least one fatality from a pellet that penetrated an individual’s skull.
White said he has numbness and frequent migraine-like headaches.
Circuit Judge Johnny E. Morrison found Gladney guilty of attempted capital murder, aggravated malicious wounding and two firearms charges.
He will be sentenced on Feb. 12.
Copyright 2008 Virginian-Pilot