VIRGINIA BEACH, Va. (AP) — The resignation email the gunman sent hours before the shooting at a municipal building was brief, unremarkable and didn’t contain anything that foreshadowed the upcoming violence that would kill 12 people, a city official told The Associated Press on Monday.
It was released at 4 p.m. Monday after being cleared by authorities for distribution.
In the mail resignation Dewayne Craddock sent to his supervisor, he writes about personal reasons, and this came hours before his fatal attacks
The email, which is redacted, reads, “I want to officially put in my (2) two weeks’ notice to vacate my position of Engineer III with the City of Virginia Beach. It has been a pleasure to serve the city, but due to personal reasons I must relieve my position.” The supervisor, whose name is redacted, responds to the personal reasons aspect of the email: “DeWayne I hope you are able to resolve your personal reasons. To be clear, your last day will be Friday June 14.”
The city maintains Craddock was not in the process of being fired, or had been fired. In fact, a City Hall source confirms the shooter was told a couple of weeks before the Friday tragedy that he was doing a good job. 10 On Your Side doesn’t know specifically what he was doing that gave him that praise, nor which supervisor told him that.
12 people were killed and several others wounded when Craddock opened fire inside the municipal building Friday afternoon, authorities said. Craddock, an engineer with the city’s utilities department, was killed during a gun battle with police.
VIDEO: Full news conference on Va. Beach mass shooting
Officials have given no indication why 40-year-old Craddock notified a superior of his intention to leave his job. He was an employee “in good standing” and showed “satisfactory” job performance, City Manager Dave Hansen said.
Police Chief James Cervera described a chaotic scene as officers entered the building and pursued the assailant through a tightly packed warren of offices that the chief likened to a maze or a honeycomb. They exchanged fire in a protracted gunbattle. Cervera did not know how many rounds were fired but said it was “well into the double digits.”
“In the police world, anything more than three to five shots is a long gunbattle,” he said.
At one point, the suspect fired at officers through a door and a wall and hit one officer, who was saved by a bulletproof vest. Then the firing stopped, and police realized the gunman was holed up in an office.
When they got into the office, they took the wounded shooter into custody and gave him first aid, Cervera said. He was taken from the scene by ambulance 36 minutes after officers arrived and died at a hospital. A medical examiner will determine whether he was killed by an officer’s bullet or his own, the chief said.
There was no indication he targeted anyone specifically. Cervera said investigators are retracing the gunman’s activities on the day of the attack, using his electronic keycard to track his movements through secure areas of the building. They are also reviewing his personal and professional lives trying to find a motive.
“Right now we do not have anything glaring,” he said. “There’s nothing that hits you right between the eyes. But we are working on it.”
Craddock appeared to have had no felony record, making him eligible to purchase guns. Government investigators identified two .45-caliber pistols used in the attack, and all indicators were that he purchased them legally in 2016 and 2018, said Ashan Benedict, the regional special agent for the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms. The police chief said at least one had a noise suppressor.
City officials uttered the gunman’s name just once and said they would not mention it again.
