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Save This PageThe Richmond Police officer involved in a shooting Saturday in Chesterfield County is Detective Paul R. Jenkins, Richmond police said today.
Jenkins is a five-year veteran of the city's police department, according to a statement released at 7:03 p.m. He is assigned to the Special Investigations Division Gang Unit and has been placed on administrative leave.
Earlier today, police said the man who was shot had approached Jenkins in a "confrontational manner" armed with a box cutter and cigarette lighter that resembled a pistol,.
Jenkins, who was working undercover, gave Mark Andrew Weaver several verbal commands to stop but Weaver didn’t comply, said Chesterfield Police Capt. Robert Skowron.
Jenkins then fired three times from inside his car, striking Weaver. Police said Weaver had been drinking.
"We know he had alcohol at the scene of the offense," Skowron said.
Weaver’s former girlfriend, Barbara Williams, said Weaver had been visiting her in the neighborhood and approached the car, which he regarded as suspicious.
"He was always overprotective of me," Williams said. "He’d always notice if there were any cars in the neighborhood that weren’t supposed to be there, because he lived with me at one time."
Weaver remained hospitalized at VCU Medical Center with life-threatening injuries.
Cheryl Anderson, who lives across the street from where Weaver was shot, said she was talking on the phone in her bedroom Saturday about 10 p.m. when she heard two people yelling outside.
"I heard an officer say, 'Stop. Police. Stop.'" Anderson said she heard two gunshots and hit the floor. She then peeked through the blinds of another window and saw a man lying on the ground beside a pine tree in the yard across the street at the corner of Dulwich Drive and Banton Street.
Anderson said she also saw what appeared to be a plainclothes police officer talking on a cell phone or radio.
" 'I thought he had a gun,'" she heard the man say. " 'I thought he had a gun, but it was a box cutter.'"
David Chamberlain, who also lives near the shooting scene, said he saw police outside his house one evening about a week ago, and one of the officers told him they were with an anti-gang unit and were conducting surveillance.
Chesterfield police are handling the shooting investigation. The Richmond Police Department said it will conduct an administrative investigation.
Times-Dispatch Staff Writer Mark Bowes contributed to this report.
