Georgia man pleads guilty to threatening Virginia Beach Walmarts, days after Chesapeake shooting
A Georgia man has pleaded guilty to calling in threats to two Virginia Beach Walmart locations just days after a 2022 mass shooting at a Chesapeake Walmart killed six people.
According to federal prosecutors, DeAndre Tamir Murphy, 30, called two Walmart stores in Virginia Beach to demand $20,000 and threatened that he had gunmen in place to kill people in the stores on Black Friday. Murphy was charged with making interstate threats faces a maximum of 20 years in prison. He may also be required to pay restitution to Walmart for lost sales, but that amount will be determined at his sentencing in September.
Court documents on the charges say the first call was placed about noon on Nov. 25, 2022, to the Lynnhaven Parkway location, just three days after the Chesapeake shooting. The location was evacuated out of caution.
Half an hour after the first call, Murphy called the Virginia Beach Boulevard location, but this time, law enforcement answered the phone, and the call was recorded.
“The caller identified himself as ‘Mohammed’ and the caller stated that he needed to ‘negotiate $20,000 in the next 20 minutes…or people are going to start dying…they are going to walk in and start shooting people…,'” the court documents read. This call launched the federal investigation.
Federal law enforcement traced the call to a hotel in Atlanta, and the Google email address connected to the account used to make the call was traced back to Murphy. Investigators also matched Murphy’s voice to calls he had made while he was incarcerated.
“Based on similarities in the sound of the voice and mannerisms of speech, investigators matched the voice on the threat recording to Murphy’s prior jail recordings,” the documents continued.
Eliza Noe, eliza.noe@virginiamedia.com
