The city of Hampton has paid $525,000 to settle a federal lawsuit by a man who was shot by a Hampton police officer outside a car dealership in the Coliseum area.
On Jan. 4, 2022, Christopher Clayton Rice struck a police sergeant in the head with a baseball bat in the parking lot of the Wynne Ford dealership on West Mercury Boulevard.
Officer Bryan Wilson then fired five rounds at Rice, striking him three times.
Rice filed the $20 million lawsuit in early 2024, alleging that Wilson knew Rice was undergoing a mental health crisis at the time. The complaint asserted that Wilson used excessive force and violated Rice’s constitutional rights.
While the settlement agreement is marked confidential, the city released portions of the five-page agreement — including the dollar amount paid — following a request from the Daily Press and The Virginian-Pilot under the Virginia Freedom of Information Act.
Despite the payment, Wilson and the city of Hampton “have denied, and continue to deny, any liability,” the agreement says. But the settlement avoids further litigation and a possible jury trial.
“The parties wish to resolve … the differences between them on mutually acceptable terms,” says the agreement, signed by Rice, Wilson, City Manager Mary Bunting and Senior Deputy City Attorney Brandi Law.
The city redacted more than two pages of the agreement, citing an exemption under the state’s open records law for “legal memoranda and other work product compiled specifically for use in litigation.”
Police responded at 11:04 a.m. on Jan. 4, 2022, to a call about “a disorderly subject armed with a bat” in the Wynne Ford parking lot, along one of the city’s busiest thoroughfares.
Employees locked the doors “and retreated to the back of the business where they were out of sight,” then-Police Chief Mark Talbot said at a news conference the day of the shooting. Workers called police.
When officers arrived, Rice would not drop the bat. The lawsuit said he held the bat in a “downward position” as four or five officers followed him.
At one point, Rice put down the bat, leaned up against a Mustang and smoked a cigarette. Then he picked the bat up again.
File photo, Hampton Police officers investigate a shooting that involved a police officer in the 1000 block of West Mercury Boulevard in Hampton Tuesday January 4, 2022. (Staff/File)
At 11:14 a.m., Wilson radioed to other officers that Rice was in front of the dealership and “appeared to be having a mental health crisis.” The officer called for a supervisor at 11:25 a.m.
Sgt. Katie Novak — a 25-year veteran of the Hampton police — arrived five minutes later and began trying to coax Rice into giving up the bat. As she slowly approached Rice, he “raised the bat and rested it on his right shoulder,” the lawsuit said.
“She spoke … in a very calm voice,” Talbot said at the 2022 news conference. “Trying to encourage him to put down the baseball bat. Over and over again. She made no threats.”
While three officers drew their Tasers, Wilson pulled out his handgun and pointed it at Rice. Novak “continued approaching Rice” and “ultimately lunged towards him in an attempt to take the bat,” according to the lawsuit.
But Rice shifted the bat from one hand to the other “before swinging the bat at the sergeant with one hand, striking her in the head,” the suit says.
Wilson fired five rounds, striking Rice three times — in the chest, thigh and forearm. After Rice fell, Wilson handcuffed him before other officers rendered first aid.
Rice’ was released from the hospital a week later. Novak was treated at the hospital and released the next day.
Rice was charged with felony malicious assault on a law enforcement officer as well as trespassing. In November 2023, he was found not guilty of both charges by reason of insanity.
File photo, Hampton Police officers investigate a shooting that involved a police officer in the 1000 block of West Mercury Boulevard in Hampton Tuesday January 4, 2022. (Staff/File)
Rice’s lawsuit was filed in January 2024 in U.S. District Court in Newport News.
The complaint emphasized that Wilson, who had been on the force for about three years, was the only one of the officers to draw a handgun. Another officer on the scene told investigators he was expecting to “get physical” with Rice before Wilson began shooting.
Rice suffered from paranoid schizophrenia but was not taking his medication at the time. Wilson shot Rice, the complaint said, even after determining he was in a mental health crisis.
“Defendant Wilson used unnecessary, excessive, and deadly force,” said the complaint, filed by South Carolina attorney Bakari Sellers. “The amount of force used by Defendant Wilson was objectively unreasonable in light of the facts and circumstances confronting him.”
The Hampton City Attorney’s Office contended that Wilson’s drawing the gun was warranted when Rice made the “threatening” gesture of resting the bat on his shoulder. The fact that Rice struck Novak in the head moments later proves that the officer’s “suspicion that deadly force may become necessary was, indeed, correct.”
At a court hearing in November 2024, U.S. District Judge Rebecca Beach Smith denied Hampton’s motion to dismiss the case.
At the hearing, the Hampton senior deputy city attorney maintained that Wilson was within his rights in shooting Rice.
File photo, Hampton Police officers investigate a shooting that involved a police officer in the 1000 block of West Mercury Boulevard in Hampton Tuesday January 4, 2022. (Staff/File)
“Officer Wilson was justified at that moment in using deadly force to protect Sergeant Novak’s life from further harm,” Law said, according to a transcript of the proceedings. The fact that someone is in a mental health crisis, she said, “would not preclude the use of deadly force.”
But Smith questioned why Wilson needed to shoot Rice five times.
The judge cited a 2024 U.S. 4th Circuit Court of Appeals ruling that said that while the first shots that North Carolina police officers fired at an advancing car were justified, the rounds they fired after the car had passed them were not.
“I’m certainly not saying that you couldn’t use lethal force against somebody who hit somebody in the head with a baseball bat, because that could kill them,” Smith said, according to the hearing transcript. “But then why do you need all the other shots?”
She also questioned why Wilson needed to handcuff Rice when he was already “incapacitated and down,” and said more facts would be needed to sort out that issue.
The settlement was reached about five months after Smith allowed the case to advance. Wilson is no longer with the Hampton Police, leaving to take a police job in Tennessee. Novak remains a sergeant with the department.
Law and Sellers did not immediately respond to a request Thursday for comment on the agreement.
Peter Dujardin, 757-897-2062, pdujardin@dailypress.com
