2019 Virginia Beach shooting

On May 31, 2019, a mass shooting occurred at a municipal building in the Princess Anne area of Virginia Beach, Virginia. The gunman, DeWayne Craddock, who was a disgruntled city employee, fatally shot 12 people and wounded four others. He was then shot dead by responding police officers.

On July 2, 2019, the Virginia Beach City Council voted to order an independent investigation of the circumstances that led to the mass shooting. The decision came after the families of some of the victims expressed dissatisfaction with the information released by the authorities.

Craddock graduated in 1996 from Denbigh High School in Newport News. Between 1996 and 2002, he served in the Virginia Army National Guard in Norfolk as a cannon crew member with the First Battalion, 111th Field Artillery Regiment. At the time of his discharge he held the rank of Specialist (E-4) and had not been deployed for combat service. In 2002, he graduated from Old Dominion University with a degree in civil engineering.

The perpetrator was identified by the police as 40-year-old DeWayne Antonio Craddock (born DeWayne Antonio Hamilton; October 15, 1978 – May 31, 2019). He worked as an engineer in the city's public utilities department until tendering his resignation in an email he sent to city management a few hours before the attack. Having resigned "within good standing in his department", Craddock still possessed a security pass to enter employee work spaces within the building at the time of the attack. In the days prior to the shooting, he was alleged to have been involved in physical scuffles with fellow city employees and threatened with disciplinary action. However, the city manager said that when Craddock resigned, he "had no issues of discipline ongoing".