PORTSMOUTH, Va. (WAVY) – For Joe and Michelle VanGilder, the indictment of retired Portsmouth police officer Vincent McClean is a chance for closure and change.
“We finally get to tell the rest of her story,” said Joe VanGilder. “It’s not just going to be pushed under the rug.”
“Even if the indictment is here and he is not found guilty, it will hopefully make another police officer stop and say, ‘Hey, am I doing all I can do to save an individual’s life,'” Michelle VanGilder said.
McClean is charged with voluntary manslaughter in the death of Joe and Michelle’s daughter, Carmeita “Carly” VanGilder. She was 28 years old and pregnant with her second child when she died in a Portsmouth holding cell on Dec. 13, 2018. Carly VanGilder’s autopsy showed she died of a heart condition due to drug use. McClean is accused of failing to call 911 or take her to a hospital when she became sick in his custody.
McClean arrested Carly VanGilder on an outstanding warrant for failure to appear just hours before she died. She had several cans of aerosol – a drug she was known to use – in her purse at the time of her arrest. She also had medical papers showing she was pregnant and that she was seen at an emergency room the day before she was arrested, court records state.
“I reviewed some of the facts from the court case and it focused heavily on the fact that she was a drug user,” Michelle VanGilder said. “I feel like that may have distorted her opportunity to get the help she needed.”
Carly VanGilder told officers she was sick and subsequently threw up in McClean’s patrol car on the way to the police station. Her symptoms became worse in the holding cell, but officers didn’t call 911 until after they found her unresponsive, court records allege.
“She was vomiting blood. She was vomiting foam. She was apparently having seizures,” Michelle VanGilder said. “There were other people in the holding cells calling out to police officers, saying something was wrong with this individual, she needs help, and yet the only thing she was offered, from my understanding, was a sip of water.”
Michelle and Joe VanGilder say that McClean wasn’t the only police officer who allegedly ignored their daughter’s cries for help – but he is the only person charged in her death. The indictment against him came down Thursday at nearly the same time a jury found him not guilty in a separate voluntary manslaughter case. That charge stemmed from an officer-involved shooting in May 2018 where a 29-year-old man named Willie Marable died.
“The timing is what concerns us the most,” said Michael Massie, one of McClean’s defense attorneys. “We just find it a little odd that it went to a grand jury while we’re in the middle of a trial.”
It didn’t take long for a jury to find McClean not guilty in the officer-involved shooting case. McClean did not fire the shots that killed Marable. He was the supervisor on the scene. Prosecutors argued that McClean didn’t provide him with life-saving measures – a similar allegation made in the Carly VanGilder case.
“Police officers have a very difficult job. What we should never try to do is task them with areas of expertise they do not have,” Massie said, adding that McClean’s legal team plans to take the case to trial within three months of the indictment.
Whatever the outcome of the criminal case, McClean’s indictment is welcome news to Joe and Michelle VanGilder. They’ve spent more than five years fighting for accountability in their daughter’s death, even winning $550,000 in a wrongful death settlement against the city of Portsmouth.
The pair have struggled with their daughter’s death for more than five years. Before that, they struggled with the drug addiction that had a grip on her life. They hope McClean’s indictment will put a close to this painful chapter, allowing them and Carly VanGilder’s surviving daughter space to heal.
“I would really just tell her how much I loved her, even though a lot of times I was very hard with her because I was disappointed that she had called once again, and she was under the influence,” Michelle VanGilder said. “I would just tell her that her daughter is so wonderful, and everyone truly loves her.”
On Saturday, the Portsmouth Fraternal Order of Police released the following statement, ” The Fraternal Order of Police Gosport Lodge 20 was pleased with the verdict handed down by a Portsmouth Jury on July 6, 2023, in the case of Commonwealth of Virginia v. Vincent McClean.”
However, the group expressed disappointment with the Commonwealth Attorney’s Office decision to proceed with an additional indictment against McClean.