A jury in Newport News Circuit Court last week found a 32-year-old man guilty of voluntary manslaughter in the slaying of his neighbor eight years ago.
Jurors found that Donnell Anthony Howard shot and killed 27-year-old Eric Charles Blackshear Jr., on Aug. 17, 2017 with a 12-gauge shotgun.
The men began arguing about 10 p.m. outside the Admiral Pointe Apartments, in the 7400 block of River Road near Newport News Shipbuilding.
According to court testimony, the confrontation began when Blackshear asked Howard for his sister’s phone number, which apparently set Howard off.
“You’re drunk!” Blackshear told him as the confrontation began. “You’re drunk!”
During an ensuing fight, Blackshear appeared to be getting the better of Howard, witnesses testified.
But after the altercation subsided, Howard asked a friend to retrieve his shotgun — a Sears & Roebuck Co. Ted Williams Model 200 — from a nearby stairwell.
The model was made by Winchester between 1950 and 1978.
Prosecutors introduced evidence from a state laboratory that there was only one fingerprint — Howard’s — on the gun.
A woman who knew both men testified that she turned into her doorway after the fight to watch something on her stove. When she came back outside, she said, Howard had a long black and brown object in his hand.
Then he opened fire, she said.
“It was like pow, a loud sound, like a cannon,” she testified. “I see like the flames from it, and that’s when I seen Eric fall to the ground.”
Another eyewitness said the unarmed Blackshear held his hands up before Howard fired. Blackshear was struck once in the chest, and died a few hours later at Riverside Regional Medical Center.
Assistant Commonwealth’s Attorney Daniel Yates said police officers tried to save Blackshear’s life, with one sergeant holding his hand against the chest wound to staunch the bleeding after a medical adhesive failed.
“They did everything they could to save this poor young man,” Yates said.
Police obtained warrants the next day for Howard’s arrest. They took him into custody a week later and charged him with second-degree murder.
That case was set for trial six times between 2019 and 2023. But after five delays — including from the pandemic and witness issues — prosecutors dropped the second-degree murder count in early 2023.
One of Howard’s lawyers, Joel Kinney, said prosecutors had difficulties getting witnesses to trial. Speedy trial rules — which mandate that prosecutors must get cases to trial within certain time frames — necessitated the charges be dropped.
But prosecutors were able to bring them back: A grand jury indicted Howard on a first-degree murder charge in October 2024.
At a three-day trial last week, the jury had the option of acquitting him or finding him guilty of first-degree murder, second-degree murder or manslaughter.
Yates and Assistant Commonwealth’s Attorney Tatyana Singh pressed for a murder conviction, saying the fingerprint and the two eyewitnesses proved their case.
“Despite the passage of time, they distinctly remember what had occurred,” Yates said. “This was an unarmed man who had just stepped outside to see his friends.”
At the time, Blackshear was a student at Thomas Nelson Community College.
But Howard’s attorneys, Kinney and Jennifer Gebler, said prosecutors failed to prove their case.
“We contended that the commonwealth didn’t carry their burden,” Gebler said. “That the evidence was shaky and the commonwealth did not carry their burden beyond a reasonable doubt.”
She added that police never talked to several other eyewitnesses at the scene that night — including a neighbor who tried to help Blackshear after he was shot.
After deliberating for about four hours, the 12-member jury convicted Howard of manslaughter and a related gun charge.
Prosecutors said they and Blackshear’s family are thankful to those witnesses who cooperated.
“We always rely on members of the community — eyewitnesses — for these kinds of cases, so we were grateful, and I think the family too is very appreciative,” Yates said.
While the lack of a murder conviction is “disapӽ紫ý to the family,” he said, “at least it was some closure.”
Kinney said he thinks jurors opted for manslaughter because “there were definitely some holes and witness issues” in the prosecution’s case.
Howard faces up to 13 years behind bars when he is sentenced in November. A separate gun count, using a firearm as a convicted felon, is being charged separately.
After Howard’s arrest in 2017, a ӽ紫ý story found that prosecutors had previously lost a chance to have him locked up on a prior charge.
Howard was charged with armed robbery in 2013, landing six months to serve. But another 9.5 years were suspended so long as he maintained good behavior.
Howard violated those terms when he was charged with stealing a woman’s car in October 2014. But prosecutors never asked a judge to impose any of the previously suspended time.
Commonwealth’s Attorney Howard Gwynn told the ӽ紫ý at the time that the case’s prosecutor should have filed such a motion. “That’s something that we emphasize and talk about in this office all the time,” he said.
That motion was filed after Blackshear was killed, with a judge giving Howard another year to serve on the 2013 charge.
Peter Dujardin, 757-897-2062, pdujardin@dailypress.com
