Will Patterson, Jr. found guilty on 12 felony charges

BREAKING NEWS

A verdict was reached Friday afternoon in the trial of Will Patterson, Jr.

He was found guilty on 12 felony charges, including attempted aggravated murder in the 2017 shooting of Portsmouth Police Officer Angelina Baaklini.

For the full coverage of the verdict, CLICK HERE.

Previous coverage:

PORTSMOUTH, Va. (WAVY) – The jury in the attempted murder trial of Will Patterson, Jr. heard Thursday from a neighbor who lived on the next street over from Hickory Street, where Officer Angelina Baaklini was trying to detain Patterson as a runaway and take him home.

But G. A. Brown was no ordinary neighbor.

Brown had worked for more than 40 years as an officer with Portsmouth Police and the Sheriff’s Department. His kitchen window had a view of where Baaklini was talking to Patterson.

“I saw a young Black male with a slender build,” Brown told the jury. “I saw the officer guiding him toward the vehicle and he sat in the driver’s side back seat, with his left foot still outside.”

Baaklini then had Patterson stand up, stood behind him and began to handcuff him. She testified Wednesday she was able to cuff his left wrist, but then Patterson was able to shoot her below the left collarbone near the shoulder.

Brown said he heard a shot and then a scream, followed by several more shots. He left his home and went to Baaklini, lying in her own blood in the middle of Hickory. By now Patterson had fled, Brown told the jury.

Brown began to break down on the stand as he recounted seeing Baaklini with a severe wound to her left thigh, later determined to be her femoral artery, a critical blood vessel.

From his experience, Brown asked, “Where’s your 10-1 button?” It’s a radio feature that allows an officer to summon help on all channels. “She appeared to be going into shock. She was going in and out (of consciousness), getting weak, and losing an extreme amount of blood.”

Brown said all that Baaklini could manage in response was “It was Will”.

Brown called for help on her regular channel, describing what Patterson was wearing. Officers began to respond to the Mt. Hermon neighborhood.

Officer Conner McDaniel testified he saw Patterson “with one handcuff sprinting across High Street and into the London Oaks apartments.” McDaniel said the first thing Patterson said during his arrest was “I didn’t shoot her,” before McDaniel even explained why he was being arrested.

In other testimony Thursday, officers described how they found four shell casings on Hickory, and a black and silver Taurus .40-caliber handgun nearby. A state forensics examiner testified the casings and two bullets removed from Baaklini’s protective vest matched the gun.

Baaklini, now known as Angelina White sustained several wounds and fellow officers arrived and applied a tourniquet to her badly wounded leg.

She spent more than two weeks at Sentara Norfolk General recovering. To this day, she needs a special pump to maintain proper circulation in her damaged leg, and she has limited function in her left arm and hand. She says she sees a counselor weekly for the psychological scars.

Patterson was certified to stand trial as an adult in the case and was convicted in April 2018 of attempted capital murder, back when Virginia still had the death penalty.

However, that conviction was thrown out in 2020 when an appeals judge ruled that Patterson was incompetent during his trial, and was denied his rights to due process and effective defense counsel.

His trial resumes Friday morning.