Judge throws out manslaughter charges against retired Portsmouth officer

PORTSMOUTH — For the second time in less than a year, a retired Portsmouth police officer was found not guilty Wednesday of manslaughter charges the city’s Commonwealth’s Attorney’s Office sought against him after people he’d arrested died in separate incidents.

Vincent McClean, 57, hugged his wife and other supporters in the courtroom after Circuit Judge Thomas Padrick Jr. granted his attorney’s motion to toss the charges against him before the case even made it to the jury.

“This is only the second time in 23 years (as a judge) that I’ve taken (a case) out of the hands of the jury … I don’t do that lightly,” Padrick said after the prosecution and defense made their arguments on the defense’s motion to strike the charges.

Padrick — a retired Virginia Beach judge and former police officer who was appointed to preside over the case — said evidence presented by prosecutors over the past two days wasn’t sufficient to allow the case to move forward. He then called the jury back into the courtroom to explain what had happened and excused them.

In the current case, McClean was accused of failing to get medical assistance for a woman he’d arrested in December 2018 on an outstanding warrant.

As McClean was driving Carmeita VanGilder, 28, to the magistrate’s office and jail, she repeatedly coughed and vomited in the back of the police cruiser. She also told the officer she wasn’t feeling well, and asked for water several times. McClean told her he didn’t have any water in the cruiser and that she’d have to wait until they got downtown, about an eight-minute drive.

At the jail, VanGilder was given water and placed in a holding cell, where her condition grew worse. Medics were called and she died while they were performing CPR.

A medical examiner later determined she died from heart failure caused by her use of inhalants, with chronic drug abuse also playing a role. The medical examiner also said she was pregnant, and was either at the end of her first trimester or beginning of the second. VanGilder had five cans of inhalants with her when she was taken into custody.

McClean’s body camera video and footage from the police cruiser’s back seat camera were played for the jury Tuesday.

While Senior Assistant Commonwealth’s Attorney Haille Hogfeldt argued that VanGilder was clearly in distress and needed to go to a hospital, defense attorney Michael Massie disagreed. So did the judge.

“I looked at (the video) and she didn’t look like she was dying to me,” Padrick said to Hogfeldt. “She very easily got out of the car and walked in” when they arrived at the magistrate’s office. “How would he know she’s having a medical emergency based on what he saw?”

Massie argued the manslaughter charges should be dismissed because they required prosecutors to prove McClean killed VanGilder, and that his actions were grossly negligent.

“Their (prosecutors) own experts don’t support their position,” Massie said. “Her death was not associated with anything he had done…There is absolutely no evidence to support this indictment.”

In a statement issued after the ruling, the commonwealth’s attorney’s office said people “should have a reasonable expectation of safety while in custody.”

“Just as this office respected the grand jury’s decision to issue an indictment in this matter, this office also acknowledges the court process,” prosecutors said in the statement. “Although the court did not allow the jurors to exercise their civic duty as the fact finders of this case, it must be noted that the medical attention and care of those experiencing medical emergencies in custody should be paramount.”

Massie and defense attorneys Nathan Chapman and Don Scott said afterward that they plan to file two malicious prosecution cases against the city on McClean’s behalf — one for each of the manslaughter cases he was charged with.

In the first case, McClean was accused of intentionally failing to render aid to a robbery suspect after he was shot by another officer. The incident occurred May 13, 2018, at an apartment complex on Navajo Trail after police were called there for a report of an armed robbery. McClean and his partner were the first to get to Willie Marable III after he was shot.

Body camera video showed McClean kept a gun pointed at Marable, while his partner handcuffed the suspect. McClean then called for an ambulance, and Marable died on the way to the hospital.

Hogfeldt — who also prosecuted that case — argued McClean had a duty to render aid to Marable until paramedics arrived. Officers are trained in first aid and keep equipment for it in their patrol cars, she said.

That case went to trial last summer. The jury acquitted McClean after just 14 minutes of deliberations. On that same day, prosecutors secured a grand jury indicted against him in the VanGilder case.

Jane Harper, jane.harper@pilotonline.com